


The Long Road

by calypsid



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Grief, Multi, Sexual Content, Slow Build, Threesome - F/M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension, game-appropriate violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2017-11-27 12:16:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 47
Words: 191,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/661902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calypsid/pseuds/calypsid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marian Hawke is captured by Templars when she's eight. She knows her father is a wanted apostate, so she gives her mother's name - Amell. The story of Marian Amell-Hawke's journey through both games. (f!Amell-f!Hawke)/Alistair/Fenris</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Sacrifice

Marian is eight when the templars catch up with her. It's her own fault, she knows. She isn't supposed to go to the market alone – isn't supposed to show off – isn't supposed to talk to the village children – but she can't help it; one of them is so infuriating that she throws a rock, and then a little spurt of flame comes out of her hand.

For a moment she's ecstatic. She's never made as much fire as that, and she can't wait to run home and tell her father all about it. 

Then she remembers where she is, and who is watching her, and what she has very explicitly promised never to do in front of strangers. The other children are staring at her in horror, but the boy she'd thrown a rock at is halfway across the square, shouting for his mother. Adults bring the templars, she knows, and it is all her fault, she'll be caught and her father will be caught and _fettered_ and it is _all her fault_ – 

Quicker than thought she is running toward their distant farmhouse, praying to the Maker with all her heart that Carver and Bethany are still playing at the old stump that marks their property line. 

\---

She sends the twins scrambling with two words and then stops, watching them go. She knows what she has to do; it is not a new idea, but one born of sleepless nights after her father explained the realities of their life after her first, glorious burst of magic. He has always treated her like an adult. Now she has to act like one.

Marian looks down at her feet, at where the twins were playing. Bethany's marbles and Carver's stuffed toy horse are lying there, abandoned in their mad rush, and on impulse she scoops them up. The pouch of marbles goes around her neck if she ties the strings just right, and she clutches the horse as she flees back to the village square. She hasn't been gone long, but she can see some of the villagers whispering as they see her pass. Rumors are already spreading about her, and probably her family. 

She reaches the spot where the children were playing. It's not far to the local chantry, and she needs to be ready when the templars come. 

She misses her family already. Marian cannot conceive of a life in which she will never see her mother's face again, or smell the scent of her hair; she already misses the way her father presses her hand when she is upset, and Carver's way of cuddling into any hug he gives. She will never tell secrets with Bethany under the covers again.

She will need a story to tell the templars when they arrive. Marian is not sure what they will be inclined to believe, but she has covered for the twins enough that she knows how to lie. Simpler is better, she decides, squatting in the dirt and carefully tucking Carver's horse into her belt before covering her hands in it. She rubs at her face and knees and elbows, then dusts off her hands on her dress and finds a convenient box to sit on.

She will not have to wait very long, after all. 

\---

Marian has heard stories of the templars since the day she first sparked her first spell. In her imagination they are ten feet tall, with swords of fire and ice and shadows that live beneath their helms, ready to suck the magic out of misbehaving mages.

The templar that comes to fetch her is much less impressive. He looks like a normal man, she decides after studying him for a long minute. He could be the baker, or someone's father. He looks like he has dirt under his nails. He talks to the boy's mother for a moment, and then the boy, who points straight at her. 

She still doesn't like him. Tattletale. 

The templar comes over to her, walking slowly, and Marian reminds herself of the story she plans to tell. His armor makes clashing noises, fighting itself, as he stops in front of her.

"You have been accused of performing magic," he says to her, and his eyes are not unkind. The templar looks tired, like her father after too much magic, and despite herself she starts to like this templar.

"I didn't mean to," Marian says in a small, unsteady voice. "I'm not a mage."

"You are a mage," he says, squatting in front of her. "A mage is someone who can do magic."

"I don't want to be a mage," she says, and in that moment it's the truth. If she weren't a mage, she would be at home right now, helping her mother with dinner. She yearns to be there in that moment so badly that she starts to cry without quite meaning to.

There is pity in his eyes now. "I'm afraid you don't have a choice in the matter," he says, and stands again, glancing around the square. "Where are your parents?"

"I told them what happened," she gets out around her tears. "Mama said – " This is harder than she expected; her mother would never say such things. "She said I was unnatural, and I wasn't ever to come back, and they got in the wagon – " She chokes on another sob, and gratefully takes the opportunity to stop. 

The templar's eyes go all flat and tired behind his helm. "Maker," he sighs. "Maybe it's for the best, child. You're for the Circle, in any case." 

"Yes, ser." She bites her lip and looks down at her hands. She's not afraid of the Circle, not like she is of the templars, but it's not home. Nothing will ever be right, ever again.

"What's your name, child?"

She looks up at him. "Marian, ser. Marian Amell." Her father was in the Circle before escaping. She knows she cannot use her real last name unless she wants the templars to hunt her family – and that is exactly what she doesn't want.

She accepts the hand that he offers, her hand tiny in his massive armored fist, and he takes her to the chantry for the night. The sisters fuss a little over her dirt-stained knees and elbows and she gets a bath before she's put to bed. 

The next morning, the Revered Mother blesses her before breakfast. Her templar, Ser Danneel, is to escort her to the nearest city, where they will meet up with another templar to take her the rest of the way to the Circle. 

Marian has spent a miserable night in an unfamiliar bed, with initiates who will not so much as look at her and talk about her as if she's not in the room with them. They call her 'little mage' and she learns that her tiny flame has been exaggerated into a fireball by nervous villagers and malicious gossip. She snorts; it had been barely a handspan high and slightly hotter than the sun on a warm summer's day. Marian sighs. Is this to be her life? She presses her hand against the pouch of marbles under the neck of her dress, and feels the warm pressure of Carver's horse tucked into her belt. Ser Danneel had almost certainly noticed the horse, but had allowed her to keep it. She could hope that all templars would be so understanding, but hope had no place in the real world. She will have to think of some way to hide them.

She gets her wish when it is time to leave. The sisters present her with a rough bag made of straw sacking; inside are a change of clothes, several smallclothes, and a rough wooden doll, well burnished by someone's thumbs. "Thank you," she says to the sisters, so grateful for this small act of kindness that she will start to cry if she does nothing. 

Then they leave, and Marian cannot help the last look she gives over her shoulder at their distant farmhouse. _Goodbye_ , she tells it silently.


	2. The Circle

They approach the tower of the Circle from the north. They'd left the North Road behind two days ago, plodding along on horses that are no more in a hurry to go southward toward the cold than she is, but Marian's been able to see the spear of the tower in the distance for hours. She doesn't know what to expect, so she can't prepare, and the templars are close-mouthed about what happens when they get there. She thinks Ser Danneel would tell her more, but Ser Jadic is terse and distant. She has more than one bruise from his careless handling.

On her right, Lake Calenhad stretches out into the distance. She's never seen anything so big, or so beautiful. She wants to run down to the shore and take off her shoes to go wading. She wants to push Carver into the surf. She wants…

She wants many things. Marian rubs at her eyes angrily.

"We're almost there," Ser Danneel tells her. He is very large behind her on the horse, and she has to tip her head back to look him in the eyes. "We have to take a boat across part of the lake."

She has never been on a boat before. The idea occupies her for all of three minutes, but the reality is far different from her imaginings; the man with the oars smells like fermented fish, and there is an appalling odor coming from down the shore. The boat rocks nearly sideways sometimes, with no rhyme or reason that she can tell, and Marian feels that she's going to be ill at any moment.

"If you're going to sick up, do it over the other side, for pity's sake," the ferryman grunts without looking at her.

For all that she hates the trip, the view is incredible. The lake stretches far, far into the distance, speckled with white in places where the wind is whipping the water into froth. Marian pinches her nose and stares into the distance, wishing herself far away from this place, free to fly as she pleases with the birds.

They dock on the island and Ser Jadic stays in the boat with the boatsman while Ser Danneel takes her into the tower. The tower doors are large, dark, and forbidding, but they open just like any other doors, and Marian takes a deep breath and walks through them. 

Ser Danneel presses on her shoulder, a silent command to stay where she is, and steps forward, coming to attention. "Knight-Commander Greagoir, ser," he says to the silent figure standing in the entrance hall. Knight-Commander Greagoir is not wearing a helm, and his face is stern in the pale morning light. "I'm Danneel, ser, out of Byerley, east of Highever."

"Greetings," Greagoir says, and then he looks at Marian. "Is this a mage child?" His gaze is cold, and she doesn't breathe until he looks away, back to Ser Danneel.

"She sparked in the middle of market day," Ser Danneel says, weary amusement in his voice. "The old biddies raced each other to report her."

"And her family?"

"Left her," he says, and this time there is no amusement at all in his voice. Marian knows enough of Danneel to know that he is angry on her behalf now, angry at the people she has made up out of whole cloth. She can't help the guilty feeling that spreads down her chest and sinks into her stomach. She owes him nothing, she knows, but she still feels as if she is stealing his kindness and concern. 

"Perhaps for the best, then," Greagoir says, echoing Danneel in the market square. "Did you question the villagers?"

"Yes, ser. There's no family in the township missing a child her age; I've sent a notice to the next two towns east and west on the North Road, but the child says they're traveling folk." 

Greagoir sighs. "If you can locate them, well and good, but you're not likely to find a traveler who doesn't want to be found."

Ser Danneel turns and motions at Marian, who hesitates before moving to stand beside him. She grips the small sack with all her worldly goods in her hand.

"This is Marian Amell," Ser Danneel says to Greagoir before looking down at her. "Marian, this is Knight-Commander Greagoir."

"Good morning, Knight-Commander," Marian says automatically. She's struck with a sudden memory of Mama going over and over proper greetings until she wanted to scream. _You're an Amell_ , Mama was fond of saying. _Act like one._

Greagoir's eyes thaw a little bit, and he unbends enough to incline his head in her general direction. "Greetings," he says. "Welcome to the Circle."

And that is that. Ser Danneel disappears, somehow, before Marian can say goodbye to the last person she knows, and she is whisked up to the head mage in charge of the Circle. He takes one look at her and snaps an order, and she's pressed down into a chair and offered tea and a slightly aged scone.

"My dear," he says – she didn't catch his name, and is now too shy and her mouth is too full to ask again – "You must be exhausted."

Marian nods. She's not actually that tired since it's not yet noon, but she is mentally exhausted, and close to tears again. She has been leaning on Ser Danneel all unknowing since they left Byerley, and now that he is gone she misses everyone, even the stupid boy she threw a rock at. She would give anything for this to be one hideously bad dream. 

"Child, what is your name?" the mage behind the desk asks. 

"Marian Amell, ser," she says, hastily swallowing her last bite of scone. She washes it down with her tea and sets the cup and saucer down on the edge of his desk, for a lack of anywhere else to put it. 

"Amell is not a Ferelden name," he says, tapping his finger against his mouth thoughtfully. 

"It's my name, and I'm Fereldan," she says, confused.

He smiles. "Of course. I apologize." She can see in his face that he doesn't believe her, but he doesn't say anything else, only sits there with a half-smile on his face.

Marian swallows. "I didn't hear you when you said your name, ser," she says.

"I am First Enchanter Irving, child," he says, sitting forward in his chair. "You understand what's happening, yes? You know you're to live here now?"

"Yes, ser," she whispers. Marian battles tears for what feels like the millionth time in the last week. She is tired of crying.

Irving sighs. "I know you're upset, child. We have all been through what you're going through right now. Each of us are taken from our families when our magic first erupts, and are brought here for training. I'm very sorry, but this is the way it must be."

Her father has spoken of this before, but she didn't understand all of it. He told her once that she would understand more as she grew older, but that doesn't make any sense to her – grownups don't act any smarter than she is, but she trusts her father. This is something to do with that, and Irving seems to expect something, so she nods. Irving rewards her with a smile, gestures with one hand, and another mage instantly comes through the door. Marian stares; she's never seen magic used so casually, so openly.

Irving winks at her as he addresses the other mage. "Torvay, this is Marian. She's a new apprentice; would you see that she finds a bed in the apprentice quarters and then ask Cassandra to provide her anything she might need?"

"Of course, First Enchanter," Torvay says, bowing. She is much younger than Irving, and her mage robes are new and stiff, crackling when she moves. She holds her hand out for Marian's, and after a glance at Irving Marian takes it, hastily grabbing her sack with her other hand. 

The ghost of her mother urges her to thank the First Enchanter, Marian, think of your _manners_ , but she will not thank the people who have taken her from her family. She will never thank them for anything. 

Torvay leads her to the door. "Welcome to the Circle, Marian," Irving says from behind her. She doesn't turn.


	3. The Harrowing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: some game dialogue.

Marian is shaken awake roughly in the middle of the night. It feels like she's just gone to sleep; her mouth tastes disgusting and her eyes are grainy and dry with what feels like the entire library's worth of dust. 

She's going to kill Petra if this is another one of her _emergencies_.

When she opens her eyes, the faceless Templar mask is leaning over her, one armored finger to his lips. She knows the tales – apprentices taken in the middle of the night and never seen from again, or turned Tranquil, or laid up in the infirmary, silent and damaged. 

She is so scared that she can't breathe.

"Get dressed, apprentice," the templar says, quiet in order not to wake the entire apprentice dorm. His voice is colorless, neutral. Maybe it's not as bad as it could be.

The templar retreats and turns his back while Marian dresses quickly, her fingers trembling. She taps him on the shoulder when she's done and he points at the door, gesturing for her to precede him. He's surprisingly quiet, even in his plate; it's like being followed by an angry ghost. He escorts her up to the fifth floor, higher than she's ever been before.

Irving and Greagoir are waiting for her, and Marian cannot help the quick flare of relief that comes when she sees Irving. She doesn't trust him – she doesn't trust anyone in this place, but at least it's not the worst that she feared. Cullen is here, too, and despite herself she relaxes a little bit more. 

It's a large, open chamber, with magic etched into the floor and the pillars scattered around the room. There's a font in the center, glowing with the wavering blue light of processed lyrium. 

Greagoir starts to speak, and she snaps her attention back to him. "' _Magic exists to serve man and never to rule over him._ ' Thus spoke the prophet Andraste as she cast down the Tevinter Imperium, ruled by mages who had brought the world to the edge of ruin. Your magic is a gift, but it's also a curse, for demons of the dream realm - the Fade - are drawn to you and seek to use you as a gateway into this world." 

The basic catechism of the Chantry is something she's heard every day since she came to live at the Circle. She believes, although she's not devout, but something in the mindless grind that is the templars' indoctrination of the evil mages makes her want to do the craziest things. Anders would be proud of her.

Marian prefers her father's litany: _My magic will serve that which is best in me, not that which is most base_. She remembers so little of her family, but that remains; that and the way his hand engulfed hers, how his whiskers scratched in the morning, and their faces, always their faces. It's been ten years, but she has managed to hold on to at least that.

Irving's voice startles her from her thoughts. "This is why the Harrowing exists," he says, moving between her and Greagoir. "The ritual sends you into the Fade, and there you will face a demon, armed with only your will." 

The surge of relief leaves her a little breathless. It's the Harrowing. Of course it's the Harrowing. She feels foolishly paranoid to have thought otherwise, but something in the depths of her mind tells her that if she'd rather face a demon on its own turf with no weapons than... the other things she'd been worrying about, if that was an appropriate reaction to the situation, then the situation was far worse than she realized. 

Marian puts that thought aside for another time. "I am ready," she tells Irving. _Maker, please let me be ready_.

Greagoir speaks before Irving can. "Know this, apprentice: if you fail, we templars will perform our duty. You will die." 

Cullen flinches, which only draws attention to the fact that he's not wearing his helm. She doesn't know what either of those facts mean, so she puts them away to puzzle over later, because Greagoir is speaking again.

"This is lyrium," Greagoir says, "the very essence of magic and your gateway into the Fade."

Irving speaks from her other side; they're closing her in. _Maybe they've had problems with apprentices attempting to flee in the past_ , Marian thinks with inappropriate levity. In any case, it forces her to keep turning between them. "The Harrowing is a secret out of necessity, child. Every mage must go through this trial by fire. As we succeeded, so shall you. Keep your wits about you and remember the Fade is a realm of dreams. The spirits may rule it, but your own will is real."

At least _someone_ is confident in her abilities.

"The apprentice must go through this test alone, First Enchanter." Marian can practically hear the frown in his voice, though she doesn't turn around to see it; she's familiar with all his scowls. 

The lyrium font is distractingly bright. Greagoir says something she's not interested in listening to; she hopes it's permission to proceed, because she's already reaching for the pool of light that sings to the magic in her blood...

There's a blinding flash of light; Marian instinctively blocks her eyes with her hand and everything goes dark. 

When the light comes back and her eyes clear, she's in the Fade. There's only one path, framed by twisted approximations of trees, so she takes it. The first wisp unnerves her, but she destroys a few of them before she's stopped by a small mouse in her path.

 _Huh_ , she thinks. _That's odd_. And then it speaks to her.

"Someone else thrown to the wolves. As fresh and unprepared as ever. It isn't right that they do this, the templars. Not to you, me, anyone."

Marian frowns. "As touched as I am by your concern, I'm not sure I understand why the Templars would send a rat into the Fade." She makes a face. "A _talking_ rat."

The rat snorts. "You look like that because you _think_ you do." It – he? – sighs. "It's always the same. But it's not your fault. You're in the same boat I was, aren't you?" With that, the rat stretches in a direction that doesn't exist. It grows upward, faster than her eye can follow, and suddenly there is a man shape where before there was nothing. The man's outline wobbles slightly and Marian swallows, suddenly nauseous, before his shape solidifies into a man only a little older than she is. "Allow me to welcome you to the Fade," he says, spreading his arms slightly to include his surroundings. "You can call me... well, Mouse."

Marian raises an eyebrow. "Not your real name, I take it?" she says, crossing her arms. Her mind is frantically taking notes in the hope of working out how to replicate it in the real world. _Didn't Elgion's Magical Laws mention shapeshifting?_

"No. I don't remember anything from... before. The templars kill you if you take too long, you see. They figure you failed, and they don't want something getting out." Marian feels another pang of terror. He smiles faintly, though there is no amusement in his voice. "That's what they did to me, I think. I have no body to reclaim. And you don't have much time before you end up the same."

"How long do I have?" she asks, urgency quickening her voice. 

"I don't remember, exactly. I..." He looks away. "I ran away and I hid."

She's known apprentices like this, who are perfectly competent when someone is there to hold their hand but can't take even the least step on their own. Kendrick had been like that, before the Templars took him away. No one ever saw him again. Against her will, she can feel herself softening toward the rat. If he'd been an apprentice, just like her, just like Kendrick... well, it's hard to hold things against someone who's in the same situation she is. Or worse.

"What must I do?" she asks.

Mouse steps a little closer and speaks a little faster. "There's something here, contained, just for an apprentice like you. You have to face the creature, a demon, and resist it, if you can. That's your way out."

That's it, then. Resist a demon, in an unspecified time frame, or die. 

She wonders if she'll even notice when her body ceases to exist. 

Marian covers her face in her hands, hiding her thoughts from the rat as she takes several deep, quiet breaths to quiet her mind. When she feels calm again, she drops her hands and nods firmly. "All right. Whatever I have to do, I'll do it."

"There are others here, other spirits. They will tell you more, maybe help... if you can believe anything you see," Mouse says, a fevered sort of encouragement in his voice. "I'll follow, if that's all right. My chance was long ago, but you... you may have a way out." With that, he performs the same mind-bending twist as he did before and shrinks back into a rat. 

_I could do without the flashing lights_ , she thinks, swallowing hard against the nausea. "Is there anything I could do to stop you?" she asks the rat, eyes narrowed, then sighs. "Never mind, that was a rhetorical question." _And terrible of me_ , she adds mentally with a wince. Mouse is just a poor, pathetic sod who's been trapped in the Fade for aeons. It isn't his fault that he puts her back up for no reason she can understand.

She starts down the path again, Mouse scurrying at her heels. The Fade is a strange, eerie place, made of colors that don't seem to exist in the real world... or maybe it's just that everything seems to be covered in a bile-yellow film. The ground is dry and cracked with short, scrubby grass in patches, desperate for a rain that will never come, and her feet slip a little when she walks. Everything here is abandoned or dead. The person whose dream this is desperately needs a little fun in their life.

Marian refuses to think about the possibility that it might be her own. 

She rounds the corner and finds a sort of clearing to the right of the path, ringed with more of those not-trees and a ravine in the back. "That is where the test will take place," Mouse informs her. She supposes his new-found willingness to please is what she deserves for threatening to leave him, but she still doesn't like it. "The creature can be anywhere, but it manifests there."

"Thank you, Mouse," she says gently, but he does not answer. In her guilt she realizes that she's already half-determined to find a way to release him from his living hell, although she doesn't have any idea of how to go about it. A thought for another time, she tells herself as she gives the clearing a wide berth and continues down the path. The list of things she's promised herself to think about later is longer than she likes to let it get, but she has had no opportunity to pare it down. Maybe later.

Mouse has been up front with answers so far, she thinks. Hopefully he'll have a few more for her. "Mouse, how am I to defeat a demon? I've never even seen one."

Mouse is silent for so long that she thinks he's refusing to answer her, but eventually he speaks. "I don't remember, but... You fight it, I think. You kill it."

 _Helpful_ , she thinks, then sighs. "Is that it?"

Mouse's voice, when it comes, is thoughtful. "Well, think of it this way: Everything here is a matter of will, right? I'm not really a mouse, just like you're not really standing there in that body. You fight the creature, you're resisting it. If it wins, it defeats you and possesses you."

Marian frowns. "And if I win?"

Her only answer is a startled glance, one that changes even as she watches into wary recognition. He seems to be looking past her. "Another spirit that way. It never seemed equal to its name, to me."

She turns to look over her shoulder and sees something bright and shining that way. "It won't kill and eat me, will it?"

Mouse snorts. "Not unless you're very bad."

He looks like he's just as startled as she is at his first signs of humor, so she passes on calling him on it and walks up to the spirit. 

Valor is as good as his name, and she quickly agrees to his duel; it is not so high a price to pay, after all, and it is all her own. When he is despatched he offers her a staff that she takes gladly. It is a fine staff and will serve her well, at least until she leaves the Fade.

Marian feels more powerful after that, with the staff in her hand and her first real fight behind her. She owes both of these things to Valor, whose nature does in fact reflects his name. Nothing in the Tower has prepared her for the idea that benevolent spirits roam the Fade alongside the demons. The Chant makes no mention of any such spirits; it's hard to say whether they don't know about it or whether it's been left out of the Tower's version. 

Marian is willing to bet on the latter. The Tower chantry only seems interested in teaching mages the lessons it thinks they need to learn, in keeping mages in their rightful place, in helping the templars to keep their boots on mages' necks.

She presses on, looking for the boundaries of this little corner of the Fade, and Mouse warns her again before they run into another spirit.

"This one is not the one hunting you," he says, his voice unusually diffident. "But still... "

The spirit looks like a large bear. A large, sleeping bear, twisted and corrupted. Marian frowns.

"Should we come back later?" Marian asks, for lack of anything else. Well, she supposes she could walk up and poke it with her staff, but that seems... unwise, although she does unlimber her staff from its bindings on her back. Just in case.

The bear shifts a little in its sleep, then speaks, without ever opening its eyes. "So you're the mortal being hunted? I see you brought snacks. How polite."

She hears a faint squelching noise next to her and hastily averts her eyes. When he's more or less human, Mouse says, "I don't like this. I don't think he's in a helpful mood."

"I don't need helpful," Marian says, narrowing her eyes. "I just need some answers."

"Answers?" the bear murmurs, almost purring. "The demon will get you eventually. Perhaps it'll leave me a few scraps. What need of answers will you have then?"

Marian makes a snap decision that will almost certainly come back to haunt her. "No," she says, stowing her staff on her back. "I don't know what your game is, and I'm not going to play it." She turns her back on the bear and starts down the path to the demon clearing. She hears a slight rustling behind her and then Mouse is hurrying to keep up. 

"Was that wise?" Mouse asks, breathless.

"Probably not," she says. "But I am in no mood – and I have no time – for prying answers from a demon."

Mouse lapses back into a sulky sort of silence, and Marian ignores him in turn. There is nothing else for it; it's time to seek out the demon. 

_My magic will serve that which is best in me, not that which is most base._

_Don't die._

Mouse keeps quiet on the way back to the clearing – Valor salutes her as they go by, which gives her a startled moment – but when they approach the lip of the raised area around it, Mouse asks, "Are you ready?" 

"Ready as I'll ever be," Marian answers, and she walks into the arena.

To her shock, the demon and its wisp minions are _easy_. The wisps hurt her very little, so she ignores them and concentrates all her damage on the demon, which goes down screaming when her cold spell finishes it off. The wisps disappear with the demon, and she hovers awkwardly with staff in hand while thinking, _Was that it?_

She can hear Mouse transforming behind her, the coward. "You did it. You actually did it! When you came, I hoped that maybe you might be able to... but I never really thought any of you were worthy."

"It's all a little too easy," Marian says, scanning the clearing warily. 

"That is because you are a true mage, one of the few. The others, they never had a chance. The templars set them up to fail, like they tried with you. I regret my part in it, but you have shown me that there is hope. You can be so much more than you know," Mouse says, eager, his words coming faster until he's tripping over his own tongue.

Marian still feels like something's wrong. She just can't figure out what; she searches the area and her mind while she says something or other to Mouse. She's not really paying attention.

It takes her a ridiculously long time to understand what her mind is trying to tell her. If her test is completed, then why isn't she waking up?

"... maybe there's hope in that for someone as small and as... forgotten as me," Mouse is saying when she spins to question him. "If you want to help. There may be a way for me to leave here, to get a foothold outside." Marian listens, a growing horror keeping her from saying anything. "You just need to want to let me in."

"To let you in," she repeats dully. No matter where the emphasis lies in that sentence, it keeps getting worse: to _let_ him in; to let _him_ in; to let him _in_... in where? "That wasn't my test, was it."

Mouse frowns. "What? What are you... Of course it was!" He moves closer, trying to catch her eye. Marian steps well back and away from him, keeping her eyes averted; suddenly everything she knows about demons is terrifyingly small. Can he possess her through her eyes? Does she have to consent, or will even the slightest softening of her will suffice? 

There is one way she can avoid possession, she knows, and her hand tightens on her staff. She will do what she has to do. She will live.

Mouse laughs suddenly, and she can't help but look at him. "You are a smart one," he says, a smirk on his face. It looks out of place for the man she had assumed him to be. So too does his voice, dropping whole octaves in seconds until it's something that could never come from a human's throat. "Simple killing is a warrior's job. The real dangers of the fade are preconceptions, careless trust... " Mouse's body begins to twist in the direction Marian has begun to become accustomed to, and she starts to look away, but when he twists _up_ instead of in she pauses, her attention caught. He grows, and grows, and she backs away in horror as she sees exactly what she's been traveling with. "... _pride_."

And then she knows no more.


	4. The Templar

"Marian? Are you all right?"

This time it's day when she wakes, fuzzy from a long night and use of magic. She knows it's Jowan – she recognizes his voice – but Marian doesn't want to go through the unofficial side of the Harrowing, the ritual hazing by the apprentices the day after some lucky sod finally earns their Circle robes. She's been one of those apprentices, and she knows where they're coming from, but she groans as she realizes what she's probably going to be enduring today. Questions. All the questions in the world.

 _Great_. 

"Say something, please?" 

Jowan sounds honestly worried this time, and Marian sighs. "I'm fine, Jowan. You do realize you're interrupting my beauty sleep?"

A sly note creeps into his voice. "As if you need it," he says, and she laughs and opens her eyes. He grins at her, and she grins back. Jowan's been a good friend since she was brought to the Tower. He lifts her feet and sits on the end of her bed, letting her rest her feet in his lap. "I'm glad you're all right," Jowan says quietly. "They carried you in this morning. I didn't even realize you'd been gone _all night_." He sounds stricken.

"It's all right," Marian says, propping herself up on one elbow so she can see his face. Jowan's been having mood swings in the past few months. She's not sure of the cause, but she can usually prod him out of them. She frowns. "Wait, does that mean you weren't in bed last night either?"

Jowan flushes a dark, brick red from his cheekbones down, and she laughs. " _Oh_ ," she says. "Who is he?" She sits fully upright, struck by a sudden thought. "Oh Maker, tell me it's not Anders."

"What – no!" Jowan sputters, his hands tightening on her ankle. She kicks at him a little and he scowls at her, his black hair giving him the look of a thundercloud about to burst. "It's nothing like that. I'll tell you later."

"So long as it's not Anders," Marian repeats, dropping back onto her pillow. "Angharad cried for _weeks_ , do you remember? And Lissette – ow!"

Jowan rubbed her foot where he'd pinched it, scowling. "Don't you ever stop talking?"

"You'd better start," she says, unrepentant. "What's got you in such a snit?"

"What was it like?" Jowan asks quietly.

Marian pulls her feet out of Jowan's lap and stands. "Jowan, I love you, but you know I can't tell you anything. It's a _secret_." For something to do, she takes her hair down from its bun and runs her fingers through it to loosen it. 

"So much for friendship," he says angrily. "We're not all as talented as you. _Irving's pet_ ," he says, making the words a curse. Marian spins on him, suddenly furious. She's heard the nickname eavesdropping on the other apprentices, but for her best friend to say that to her face – only to find him looking at his hands, forlorn. "I don't know when they'll call me for my Harrowing," he says. " _If_ they'll call me."

Impulsively, she leans forward and takes his hands in hers. "They'll summon you when you're ready," she says gently, and it's hard to avoid the thought that he's not ready yet. There's some truth in the teacher's pet namecalling, terrible as it is to think those thoughts; Irving gives her private instruction sometimes, and she is a more gifted student than Jowan. 

"I've been here longer than you have..." he says. "Sometimes I think they just don't want to test me."

Marian can see the storm cloud beginning to form in the creases between his eyes. Of all things she doesn't want to deal with Jowan in a _mood_ – not today, of all days. Letting go of his hands, she stands and picks up a comb, ruthlessly dragging it through her long, curly hair. "There's no schedule to keep for this," she says, wincing as she hits a snarl. "You're ready when you're ready. It'll be soon, I'm sure."

"I've been ready for a long time. I'm afraid they think I'm too weak."

"Oh, Jowan," Marian sighs. She wraps her freshly-combed hair into a messy bun and ties it off. "You worry too much."

"Is that what you think?" Jowan says tonelessly, but he smiles a little when her worried gaze snaps to his face. "Sorry to waste your time with all this," he says. "I was supposed to tell you to see Irving as soon as you woke up."

"What?" Marian yelps. Automatically she glances at the windows and the hour-candles; it's late afternoon already. "Where is he?"

"His study, of course." Jowan shrugs and levers himself up, off her bed. "You should go. Don't want to keep him waiting."

Marian brushes down her robes, checks the nape of her neck for stray locks of hair, then turns for the nearest door. She curses when she sees the two girls standing next to it. They're the worst gossips in the apprentice dorms, and the instigators of many an interrogation session that would put Chantry Seekers to shame.

They don't show any signs of moving, but they also look engrossed in their gossip. Maybe she can slip by while they aren't paying attention. She'd reached the door before what they were saying had a chance to penetrate. 

"...that templar, Cullen, said it was the quickest, cleanest Harrowing he's ever seen. He says she's very talented and very brave." 

Marian freezes.

"But he would say that, wouldn't he?" They both laugh and go into the lavatory. Thank the Maker for small mercies, because neither notice Marian awkwardly hanging around, listening to them gossip.

Marian shakes herself and slips out the door, closing it very softly behind her. _I wonder what they meant by that?_ She ducks through the library, doing her best to avoid being waylaid by the apprentices hanging around, and takes the stairs up to the second floor. She shivers as she passes the Tranquil Owain and thumbs the Maker's Circle on her chest to ward away bad luck. She hates the Tranquil. She sees herself in them, and she knows exactly which part they're lacking. Looking at them is like looking in a mirror and seeing absolutely nothing at all; she stays away as much as she can.

Everyone she passes has a comment or a kind word or a question for her, and it takes her all of an hour to get through the mage library. Old Sweeney takes half of that time with reminiscing.

Irving's office is at the end of one of the curving half-sections, just before the third floor stairs. Marian knows she's supposed to go straight there, but she can't help ducking into the mage quarters on this floor and looking at her new rooms for the first time. She's never had a room of her own, or a bed that wasn't shared, and while she's going to enjoy the quiet, all she can see when she looks at her hard-won freedoms is that it's finally time to plan her escape.

Freedom's been her dream for ten years, and it's never been closer to her hand than it is right now. A slow burn of wild exultation begins to burn in her chest; she thinks about dancing, and laughs out loud. Marian drifts more than walks out of the rooms and back into the hallway, turning right to go to Irving's office, and actually walks right into a templar's cuirass. 

She comes back down to earth with a thump and looks up, her mouth open to apologize. 

It's Cullen. 

He's got his hands up, ready to catch her, but Marian hastily takes a step back and smiles. "My apologies, Ser Cullen," she says. "I wasn't watching where I was going."

She can't get the gossiping apprentices out of her mind, or the one downstairs who had brushed past her and whispered _I hear Cullen's in love with you_. 

It's nothing more than idle fancy, and she's heard that kind of thing before in the hothouse atmosphere of the Tower, but it's information Marian has no idea what to do with. Nor does she know how to talk to the man in front of her.

"No - no matter," Cullen says, swallowing. He drops his arms too quickly and his gauntlets clash against his fauld. "I... I am glad to see your Harrowing went smoothly."

Well, perhaps she's not the only one.

"As am I, ser," Marian says, smiling. "As am I."

Cullen's voice drops a little; she leans in slightly to hear him better. "Th-they picked me as the templar to strike the killing blow if... if you became an abomination." She doesn't know what look comes over her face, but it must have been something, because Cullen waves his hands in agitation. "It's nothing personal! I'm – " He swallows. "I'm just glad you're all right. You know."

There's something adorably endearing about the way he can't seem to get out a sentence without tripping over his words. Marian has sworn to herself never to trust anyone in the Tower, templar or mage, but in truth, she's never even been tempted, until now. Cullen is a good man, which is all too rare among the templars. 

Even so, Marian can't help but tease him a little. "Would you really have struck me down?"

"I would have felt terrible about it," Cullen confesses, his face solemn. "But... I serve the Chantry and the Maker, and I will do as I am commanded."

All her levity flees at his words. She's a little ashamed of herself, in fact. "I'm glad it was you," Marian says in all seriousness, and struck by a sudden notion, she steps close, lifts herself up on her tiptoes, and kisses Cullen's cheek. When she draws back their eyes meet; his are very serious, and Marian hopes he can see the sincerity in hers. "Thank you, Ser Cullen."

"You're welcome, Mistress Amell." Cullen bows a little at the waist.

Marian doesn't know what his real feelings for her are, or if he in fact has any, but in that moment she loves him a little.

She steps back and says lightly, "I am distracting you from something very important, I'm sure."

"Oh, you're not distracting. I mean, you are, but... " Cullen covers his eyes for a moment, exasperated. "You're not. I mean, you can talk to me anytime if you want." 

Marian grins at him and this time he grins back, shy but appealing; then she goes on her way and Cullen goes on his. 

Irving's office is the third door after that, on the outside. As she approaches the door, she can hear Greagoir using his outdoor voice. It's tempting to dawdle in the hall until he leaves, but she's already late enough, and in any case Irving has never minded having an audience for Greagoir's temper. She slips in through the open doorway.

Her ears have deceived her; there is another man there, watching Greagoir and Irving argue with thinly disguised impatience. He is tall and very dark, and wears armor quite unlike the full plate the templars never take off; over top lies blue and white livery, emblazoned with two griffons back to back. It's the Grey Warden heraldry, Marian knows, and she can't help but feel a thrill of excitement climb up her spine. A Grey Warden? Here? 

The Warden looks away from the arguing men and sees her hovering beside the door. "Irving, someone is here to see you." Greagoir pauses, mid-sentence, and he and Irving both turn to look at her. The warden gives her a faint smile, which she returns; she knows exactly how loud they can get, and she sympathizes. 

"Marian, my dear!" Irving says with a smile, coming toward her, hands outstretched. "Congratulations on your ascension to the Circle." Marian hears what he's not saying: _Congratulations on not dying_.

She knows that in Irving's eyes, she has just become - not an adult, because she is only eighteen; Irving patronizes Leorah just as much as he does the newest apprentice, and she is near thirty - but she is now part of a smaller group, one he has to pay attention to. 

There is a surprising amount of politicking among the senior mages for the post of First Enchanter. The post is traditionally appointed by the Knight-Commander, but even he listens to the tides of power and opinion in the Tower. The posturing for influence and precedence gets sort of silly sometimes, and Marian is sure that Irving and Greagoir encourage it; perhaps they think that if mages are pursuing worldly power, they won't also become maleficars. It seems short-sighted to her, but of course nobody has ever asked for _her_ opinion.

Marian has just graduated to the status of full Circle mage, and that makes her a new quarry for the influence games; she has just completed a very fast Harrowing, and that marks her as someone to watch. She will be courted by the various fraternities, the Isolationists, the Libertarians, and the rest. She inclines to the Aequitarians on strictly moral grounds; they believe that mages must hold themselves to a code and ruling oneself above all. But in the end, none of the politics or philosophies matter a damn to her, because she is getting out and leaving all this far behind. 

But if she doesn't want anyone to become suspicious at her complete lack of interest, she's going to have to play the game.

 _Damn it_.

Marian smiles at Irving. "You sent for me, First Enchanter?"

"Yes, of course," he says, gesturing for her to come further into the room. She comes to meet them, stopping besides Greagoir, who greets her with a stiff nod.

"This is...?" The warden murmurs to Irving, watching her intently.

Irving nods. "Yes, this is she."

Marian turns that over in her mind for a moment - Irving has been talking about her? He's been claiming credit as her mentor, of course. Perhaps that's all there is to it.

"Well, Irving, you're obviously busy. We will discuss this later," Greagoir says and stumps out of the room, his armor making cheerful jangling sounds in direct contrast to his obviously poor temper.

"I look forward to it," Irving says, his voice saying exactly the opposite, and then he beams at Marian and the man next to him. "But I've been remiss! Marian, this is Duncan, of the Grey Wardens. And Duncan, this is Marian Amell, our newest Circle Mage."

"Pleased to meet you," Marian says, and she means it. The Grey Wardens are everyone's favorite bedtime story; she never thought she'd meet one in person.

Duncan bows to her and comes up wearing a smile, one that says he knows exactly what she's thinking. "Good day, Mistress Amell," he says. His voice is very deep.

"You've heard about the war brewing to the south, I expect? Duncan is recruiting mages to join the king's army at Ostagar." 

"You're recruiting here?" Marian asks. "For mages or for templars?" 

"For mages, I hope," Duncan answers. "Although as I understand it, the templars would come with you free of charge."

Marian is sorely tempted to ask for permission to go, although she knows it will be denied; she is too fresh off her Harrowing to be sent anywhere, especially the front lines of a darkspawn war. "I hope you find what you need, ser," she says instead.

"As do I, Mistress," Duncan replies, his eyes thoughtful. "With the darkspawn invading, we need all the help we can get, especially from the Circle. I fear if we don't drive them back, we may see another Blight."

Irving laughs. "Duncan, you worry the poor girl with talk of Blights and darkspawn. This is a happy day for her."

"We live in troubled times, my friend," Duncan says, a note of reproving in his voice. 

"All the more reason to seize on moments of levity when they occur." Irving smiles beatifically at her. Marian feels a little bit like a prize horse being inspected by its owner; maybe she'll be asked to show her teeth next? Unaware of her increasingly defiant thoughts, Irving continues, "The Harrowing is behind you. Your phylactery was sent to Denerim. You are officially a mage within the Circle of Magi."

It's the first time anyone has so much as mentioned where the phylacteries are kept. Irving can't be so stupid as to just _give_ her the only information she needs to make a successful escape. He _can't_.

Can he?

Perhaps it's not so large a stretch – after all, she has never been rebellious except in the confines of her mind, and Denerim is across the entire kingdom. It might not even be true.

"I am honored, First Enchanter," she says calmly. Marian has been given many gifts today, and the possibility of her freedom is the most precious.

Duncan looks from Irving to Marian, confused. "I'm sorry – what is this phylactery?"

"Blood is taken from all apprentices when they first come to the tower and is preserved in special vials," Irving explains.

It's Chantry-sanctioned blood magic to keep mages on the leash, of course, but somehow that's an acceptable compromise to them. 

Marian admits she might be a little biased.

"So they can be hunted if they turn apostate." Does she imagine the reproach in Duncan's voice? 

"We have few choices. The gift of magic is looked upon with suspicion and fear. We must prove we are strong enough to handle our power responsibly." Irving shakes his head and turns to Marian. "You have done this. You now have the right to wear Circle robes, to bear a Circle staff, and wear a ring bearing the Circle's insignia, all of which can be found in your new quarters. Wear them proudly, for you have earned them."

"Yes, First Enchanter," Marian says, bowing a little. The acolyte staves are notoriously underpowered, and she can't wait to get her hands on a proper staff.

Irving waves her off with a warning not to talk about the Harrowing and asks her to escort Duncan to his guest quarters. Marian does her best not to drill him with questions on the walk, but she can't resist asking just one or maybe two about the Grey Wardens; Duncan seems willing to talk, and she lingers in his quarters for a moment until she notices how tired he looks. 

Marian excuses herself with a smile and leaves the guest chamber. In the hallway, waiting for her, is Jowan.


	5. The Maleficar

"Jowan, my friend," Marian says, collecting Jowan's arm and dragging him along with her as she goes down the hallway toward her new quarters. "If you're stalking me, we're going to have _words_."

"You'll have to catch me first," he says, with a small smile that immediately vanishes. "Look, I need your help."

Marian hisses at him to quiet him; she deposits him in her room while she checks the two other separated rooms that make up the mages' quarters on this floor. They're empty, and she returns to her own to find Jowan pacing anxiously. He stops as soon as he sees her.

"Well?" he asks.

"They're empty," Marian says. She keeps her voice down anyway; there are no doors to the individual rooms, and the hallway door stands open. 

"Do you remember what we talked about this morning?" 

Marian prays for patience. "I'm not going to tell you about the Harrowing. I wish you'd stop asking!" 

"But..." Jowan frowns. "Wait a moment." He leaves her with no more explanation than that, and Marian scoffs. _He has a funny way of asking for help_ , she thinks, but Jowan has always been secretive in a completely infuriating way. 

Her Circle robes, staff, and ring are lying on the bed, and she immediately picks up the staff. It's similar to her acolyte staff in looks and weight, but when she tentatively queries it with her magic, she can immediately feel that it's quite different in reactivity and magical throughput. It'll be interesting to see what kind of power she can obtain with it. She puts on the ring, etched with the symbol of the Circle, and sets the robes aside; Jowan could return at any second, and she doesn't have a changing screen.

Her thoughts inevitably return to her phylactery, and to Denerim. The maps in the library suggest that with a fast horse it could be no more than five days ride from the docks, but she cannot leave without more information; wandering around Denerim looking for a secret Templar warehouse is a terrible idea, bound to end in tears.

She can hear Jowan coming back, so she sits on her bed and waits. When he comes through the open doorway of her room, he is not alone. 

The girl with him is wearing Chantry initiate robes, but underneath them she's lovely, all auburn hair and glowing eyes. Jowan is holding her hand, as if he has a perfect right to do so, as if she is not sworn to _Andraste_.

"Jowan," Marian says in utter and complete horror. "What have you _done_?"

"This is Lily," Jowan says. 

Marian opens her mouth to reply with some heat, but something in his eyes stops her, something proud and wondering and terrified. Stepping on that feels like stepping on a kitten. "Oh, Maker," she groans. "Why are you doing this to me? Do you know what Greagoir's going to do to all of us when you get caught?"

"Thumbscrews and the rack?" Jowan offers with a smile. 

"No, that's what _I'll_ do," she grumbles, but she doesn't mean any of it, and Jowan knows it. Marian gives up the impossible task of making Jowan feel the least little bit of shame about anything and turns to Lily. "Forgive me," Marian says, smiling. "You have my condolences, for what it's worth."

"Oy!" Jowan protests.

Lily smiles. "I can see why the two of you are friends."

"Oh, ouch," Marian says, then laughs. "Hoist on my own petard, I see. All right." She falls silent for a moment, and when Jowan doesn't immediately start talking, she says, "You can't have got me in here to chat about love."

"I wish that was the only thing I needed to talk about." He glances at Lily. "Remember I said that I didn't think they wanted to give me my Harrowing? I know why. They're... going to make me Tranquil."

Marian frowns. It sounds like more of Jowan's paranoia from earlier, but... "How do you know?"

"I saw the document on Greagoir's table," Lily says, distressed. "It authorized the Rite on Jowan. Irving had signed it."

Marian wishes she were more surprised, but she's always known that Irving isn't the sort to stick his neck out for the axe. "What are you going to do?" she asks.

"We need your help!" Jowan cries, releasing Lily's hand and dropping to one knee before Marian. "Please, Marian. Lily and I can't do this on our own."

If it were anyone else, Marian would at least think about her answer, but Jowan has helped her, schemed with her, studied with her, and supported her. "Of course I'll help," Marian agrees immediately. She puts her hand on Jowan's head, comforting for a moment before she ruffles his hair on that side. "What do you need?"

"Your word on it?" Lily asks, her eyes very steady. 

Marian studies her for a moment; she likes what she sees. Lily is strong where Jowan is sometimes weak; they will be good for each other, given the chance. "You have it."

Jowan sighs in relief and stands. "I knew you'd help," he says, smoothing down his rumpled hair. 

"Because I'm a _sucker_ ," Marian grumbles, but he's right – there was never any possibility of her saying no. 

Lily and Jowan explain their plan, what there is of it; naturally, it's missing all the important details, like how to keep the templars away, what to do with Jowan's phylactery after they steal it, and exactly how they're going to get out of the Tower afterward and across the lake without the templars noticing.

"Your brilliant plan is to blow up the door leading to the phylacteries?" Marian asks, dumbfounded. "You know the cells are down there, right? The ones they keep Anders locked up in? They won't have to take you far to lock you up. Oh, _Maker_ ," she says, covering her face with her hands. "Don't talk to me. Let me just – I'm going to go get a rod of fire. You try not to come up with any more ridiculous plans while I'm gone."

Marian refuses to think about Jowan's plan anymore, in the hopes that refusing to think about it will make it less stupid. Naturally, Owain won't hand over a rod of fire on a whim, so she needs a senior enchanter who will sign her request form without actually thinking about it. 

Another hour of her life later, she has a signed request form for a rod of fire and Old Man Sweeney has remembered her name for the first time in ten years. 

Marian hesitates before turning out of the library into the circular area that is the heart of this floor, where the storeroom is located. She could turn Jowan and Lily in to Irving, she knows. In all honesty, they'll probably be caught at the docks, or the small village on the shore of the lake. She might even be doing them a favor. 

Marian rolls her eyes at herself; she knows perfectly well she's not going to betray them. Even if Jowan weren't her friend, even if she hadn't liked Lily practically on sight... all Marian wants is to escape the Tower, and she can't deny other people the opportunity she would so dearly like to take for herself. Neither will she condemn her friend to a fate worse than death.

With Sweeney's signature on her requisition form, Owain hands over the rod of fire with no questions asked. Marian gathers Jowan and Lily from her room on her way to the stairs; a mage, an apprentice, and an initiate attract a few looks going through the library on the first floor, but nobody stops them as they pass through the basement and the Victim's Door to reach the door of the reliquary. 

She uses the rod of fire on the door's locks. 

Nothing happens.

"Why isn't it working?" Lily asks.

"I don't know," Marian says, distracted. She reaches out to the rod with her magic, feeling along the pathways of her skin into the rod – 

It's not working. Something is blocking her magic from moving outside of her skin. Marian tries again, unease climbing her spine in shuddery waves that lift the hairs on the back of her neck, but again her magic is blocked at the point where it would leave her body. 

Marian has never not been able to do this. 

"Lily..." Jowan says, the same unease she's feeling clearly present in his voice. "I can't cast spells here. Nothing works."

Marian immediately tries to cast the very first spell she learnt as an apprentice, a simple floating light that doesn't require a staff. She cups her hands together and encourages her magic to pool in the way she was taught, but nothing happens. Jowan is right. Neither of them can cast anything. She's never felt so defenseless or exposed.

"Oh, no," Lily says, touching the door and tracing the most intricate of the stone carvings that cover the door. "Oh, I never thought of this. These are _wards_. Anti-magic wards."

Without conscious thought Marian takes a step back, away from the door. "Templars can do that?" she asks uneasily.

"I didn't know," Lily says, fingers still on the stone carving as she turns to speak to Jowan. "But I should have guessed – why else would they use ordinary keys?"

"How are we going to get in now?" Jowan asks. This is usually the part where he panics, and Marian can only hope that he'll keep it together in front of Lily.

Marian eyes the door, backing up a little more. The hinges are on the inside, so they can't dismantle the door, and the stone is thick and strong. They won't be getting through here, not without magic.

"Maybe there's another entrance around the side?" she suggests. 

Jowan scoffs. "What are the chances of that?"

"If there isn't one," Marian says grimly, striding toward the other door that leads into the basements proper, "I'll _make_ one." 

Her words are more accurate than she knows; Marian does indeed have to make a door into the phylactery chamber, but after that they're inside, with nothing between them and Jowan's phylactery except a really angry animated Guardian.

She finishes it off with a lightning strike and gestures for Jowan to precede her up the stairs to a long, low table strewn with phials. "Which one?" she asks, looking between the phials; they are all different shapes, some with round, bulbous bottoms, some look like wine bottles, and others look like reused potion bottles.

"I don't know," Jowan says with some distress. "I never thought that I wouldn't be able to tell."

 _Of course you didn't_ , Marian thinks, clenching her teeth to keep from saying it right out loud. He has thought none of this through, and Lily is so blind with love that she will follow him anywhere when she should be leading him by the nose so he won't do anything stupid.

She picks up the nearest phial and thanks the Maker and all his servants when she turns it over and finds that it's labeled neatly on the bottom:

 _9:24 Dragon_  
_Llewellyn_  
  
They check the bottom of every phylactery until they find Jowan's, neatly labeled _9:18 Dragon_. "I can't believe this tiny vial is all that stands between me and freedom," he says, wondering. "It's so fragile."

He's talking more to himself than to either of them, and neither reply. Jowan opens his hand and lets the phial drop; it shatters on the stone, spraying blood and glass everywhere. He scrubs his toe in the blood, smearing it a little, then spins and grabs Lily, hugging her and laughing. "I'm free!"

Lily laughs with him, looking down at him with something soft and delighted on her face. Marian doesn't have the heart to disturb them... but they're not free yet, no matter what they think. Next they must get past the templars guarding the front doors, and then they must brave the lake.

"We have to hurry," she reminds them, and they reluctantly part. Marian tries the inside of the first door, the one they had been unable to open; this time it opens easily, and when it does she feels the ward dissipate like so much cloud in the breeze. They leave the basement, each step quicker than the last; they're almost laughing when they burst out of the basement door. The end is nearly in sight.

Greagoir's voice interrupts their relieved laughter, silencing them in an instant. "So what you said was true, Irving." 

"G-greagoir!" Lily stammers, shocked.

He has obviously been waiting for them; he stands with Irving and two templars, arms folded and a scowl on his face. A thousand stories flicker through Marian's mind, but in the end there is no story that will prevent Greagoir from checking the phylactery chamber if he has the slightest suspicion of what they've been doing. 

Still, she would do it again, and that thought squares her shoulders and lifts her chin. She will not be intimidated. 

And maybe she and Anders can talk to each other in their cells. 

"Good evening, Knight-Commander," Marian says, keeping her voice steady through an effort of will. Something flickers in Greagoir's eyes, something that looks like unwilling respect, and then it's gone; but that gives her something to hold on to. Greagoir appreciates courage, and loyalty, and civilized behavior; he will set the length of their sentences, and it's best they stay on his good side.

Greagoir shakes his head. "An initiate, conspiring with a blood mage. I'm disappointed, Lily."

Marian stares at him, too shocked to protest or question and too scared to say anything at all. A blood mage? This isn't just solitary confinement material; collaboration with a blood mage is grounds for the Rite of Tranquility. Or worse. 

Greagoir beckons to Lily and she obeys, standing before him with her head bowed. He lifts her chin and examines her eyes. "She seems shocked, but fully in control of her own mind," he says over his shoulder to Irving. "Not a thrall of the blood mage, then."

Marian isn't entirely sure she's breathing. She is not a blood mage, and she cannot believe it of Jowan; this is all a mistake, a terrible mistake that will be cleared up. None of the awful things she is imagining are going to happen. 

She bites her lip. If only she believed herself.

"The initiate has betrayed us. The Chantry will not let this go unpunished." Greagoir lets Lily go; she steps back into submissive invisibility, something she must have learned in the Chantry, before Greagoir turns on Marian. "And this one – newly a mage, and already flouting the rules of the Circle."

Marian swallows.

Irving sighs. "I'm disappointed in you, child. You could have told me what you knew of this plan, and you didn't."

Marian ruthlessly suppresses the instinct to tell Irving exactly what she thinks of him; it will not make an iota of difference, and in fact will make this horrible situation even worse, but oh how she _wants_ to. If she'd told him what Jowan was planning, he would have betrayed all three of them in an instant for some momentary advantage in a power play with Greagoir or one of the factions. 

"You don't care for the mages!" Jowan says, anger in every word. Marian winces. "You just bow to the Chantry's every whim!"

"Enough!" Greagoir strides forward toward them, the force of his steps making his armor clash more than usual. "As knight-commander of the templars here assembled, I sentence this blood mage to death."

He's not looking at her, Marian realizes; he's looking at Jowan. They can't possibly think Jowan is a blood mage, and she opens her mouth to say so before Greagoir continues, pointing one massive gauntleted finger at Lily. "This initiate has scorned the Chantry and her vows. Take her to Aeonar."

 _Aeonar?_ Marian darts a look at Lily, who's just gone even more pale than usual. "The... the mages' prison. No..." She's begging and backing away from them until she steps out over the empty space at the top of the stairs leading down to the basement; Marian just catches Lily's arm before she can fall. "Please, no," Lily says, desperately clinging to Marian's arm. "Not there."

Marian happens to catch Jowan's shoulders tighten out of the corner of her eye; she knows it's not a good sign, but she can't reach him from where she stands. "Jowan..." she says, warning him off.

But Jowan's not listening anymore. "No! I won't let you touch her!" he shouts; he reaches into his robes and pulls out a little knife, rounded near the hilt and very sharp. The idea that he could take on three templars and the First Enchanter with a little knife like that – Marian starts to shout at him, and Lily is clinging to her arm, keeping her from reaching him – 

Jowan drives the knife down into his own hand. He bleeds, and he bleeds, and bleeds; instead of thinning out and slowing down, the blood flow increases, spattering everyone and everything within reach. Jowan says one sharp word and gestures with his wounded hand, and the blood leaps up from the floor to surround the templars, Greagoir, and Irving. Then they collapse, abruptly, like a marionette with cut strings. 

"Jowan," Marian breathes in horror. "Jowan, _what have you done_?"

"I couldn't let them take you," Jowan says, turning. He's talking to Lily, of course, and there's an obscure pain in her chest; even after all this, after everything that's happened, Marian resents Lily for coming between her and the best friend she's ever had. 

She supposes she didn't really require an answer to her question, in any case. The apprentices have been buzzing for days about a blood mage somewhere in the Tower, and for once, they've stumbled on the right answer. It explains everything - his mood swings, his absences, his terror over the Harrowing. It explains everything except _why_.

"Blood magic?" Lily says, still clinging to Marian. "By the Maker – how _could_ you?" Her voice is full of the same betrayal Marian is feeling. "You said – you _promised_..."

"I just dabbled!" Jowan says, holding his hands out entreatingly. "I thought... I hoped it would make me a better mage!"

Lily shakes her head, her eyes very wide in her face. "Blood magic is _evil_. It corrupts everything it touches."

"I'm going to give it all up!" Jowan says, pleading. "Everything, all the magic. I just want to be with you, Lily – I love you. Come with me. Please."

Lily looks at him for what seems like an age. "I trusted you," she says eventually, letting go of Marian's arm. She steps forward, toward Jowan, and he is forced to back away as she moves; the betrayal on her face is unbearable. "I was ready to sacrifice everything for you." Lily breaks off, shaking her head. The quiet strength that Marian had so admired before is back. "I don't know you, blood mage. Stay away from me." 

But she points to the exit.

Even that is a concession; Lily and Marian together probably can't overcome his blood magic, but they could try. Lily still bears the mace and shield Marian stole for her, and Marian has a trick or two up her sleeves Jowan has not seen yet.

Jowan opens his mouth, then closes it again. His shoulders slump and his head bows, the very image of a defeated man. He turns to leave, and that's when he sees Marian, standing exactly where she's been this entire hellish confrontation. 

"Marian..." Jowan has said her name like that a thousand times, whenever he needs help, and she has always given it to him if she could. She doesn't honestly know what he wants from her this time, but whatever it is, she cannot give it to him. 

"Go," Marian says, her heart heavy. "While you still can."

Jowan hesitates for a moment more, then heads for the front doors at a run. He doesn't look back, and after one last glance, she lets him go.

With Jowan's disappearance, the group on the floor starts to stir; Marian moves to help Irving, who is old and feeble and the only one of the four who will accept a mage's touch. He sits up with only a little difficulty. "Are you all right, child? Where's Greagoir?"

"I am here," Greagoir says, struggling only a little under the weight of his plate armor when he stands. "I knew it... blood magic. But to overcome so many – I never thought him capable of such power."

"I didn't know." Marian feels an overwhelming urge to make them understand, make them realize that she had no idea. "I never thought... I thought I knew him."

"None of us expected _this_ ," Irving says while she helps him to his feet. 

Greagoir turns on Irving. "If you had let me act sooner – "

"You cannot know that," Irving interjects.

"Now we have a blood mage on the loose and no way to track him down," Greagoir continues as if Irving hasn't spoken at all. 

"You'll think of something." Irving dismisses Greagoir the way Marian wishes he would do more often.

Greagoir grunts, displeased, before rounding on Lily. "And you! You helped a blood mage! Look at all he's hurt!"

Lily squares her shoulders. "Yes, Knight-Commander. I was accomplice to a... a blood mage," she says, swallowing. "I will accept whatever punishment you see fit. Even... even Aeonar."

"She didn't know," Marian objects.

"Thank you, but I can speak for myself," Lily says, and though her voice is not unkind, it's a command. Marian does not object further, though she wants to.

Greagoir gestures to the silent templars who have been with him the entire time. "Get her out of my sight." They come forward and take her arms, and Lily is led away, just like that.

After they go, only Greagoir and Irving are left with her. Marian is acutely aware of her part in this sordid episode, and she is the only one yet unpunished. That won't last, she knows; Greagoir will never let anything like this slide. She will be made an example to the others.

Greagoir turns on her. "You! You know why the repository exists. Some artifacts – some magics – are locked away for a reason."

Marian bows her head. She _is_ sorry, in a way – sorry she ever woke up this morning. But that will not help her, so she stays silent, waiting.

"You have made a mockery of the Circle," Greagoir says, when it is obvious she doesn't intend to speak. "What are we to do with you? You helped a blood mage escape. All our prevention measures for naught – because of you!"

Marian is caught between her guilt and her defiance. Helping a blood mage escape – but the Circle is a prison, another part of her argues, and they should all be free... She goes around in circles without deciding anything.

Greagoir opens his mouth to proclaim her sentence – Tranquility or death, her mind whispers – but another voice from behind her cuts him off. "Knight-Commander, if I may..." It's Duncan, the Grey Warden.

It's only because Marian is watching every little detail of Greagoir's expression that she notices him close his eyes and sigh, just a little.

Duncan comes up behind her, and she turns to look at him. "I am not only looking for mages to join the king's army, I am also recruiting for the Grey Wardens. Irving spoke highly of this mage, and I would like her to join the Warden ranks."

Marian has no idea what to say. It sounds heaven-sent – a chance to escape, and to avoid whatever torment Greagoir has in mind, but in another way she feels that she doesn't deserve it. Whatever reasons she may have had, whatever she knew or didn't know, she has helped a blood mage escape the templars. 

"Marian has assisted a maleficar," Irving says. His voice is cool and lacks its usual ingratiating notes. "She has shown a lack of regard for the Circle's rules."

Greagoir nods. "She is a danger. To all of us."

"But it is a rare person who risks all for a friend in need," Duncan says thoughtfully. Marian is not so sure – she's been manipulated and deceived twice in one day, and that doesn't speak well for her. "I stand by my decision. I will recruit Mistress Amell."

"You may not have her," Greagoir growls, folding his arms. "She must be punished, not rewarded; an example must be set for the rest."

"And what does she want?" Duncan asks, catching her eye.

Marian hesitates. She wants to leave – she cannot question that goal, not after so long, but she doesn't know what might be required from her in the Grey Wardens. It could be a case of jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

And yet anything she can imagine seems better than the Circle, and the templars, and the things that happen in the dark.

"I will go, ser," Marian finally answers in a low voice. "If you will have me, I will go."

"No!" Greagoir protests.

"Greagoir, mages are needed," Duncan says. " _This_ mage is needed. Worse things plague this world than blood mages – you know that." He locks eyes with Greagoir, and after a long moment, Greagoir is the one who looks away. "I take this young mage under my wing and bear all responsibility for her actions."

Greagoir laughs bitterly. "A blood mage escapes, and his accomplice is not only unpunished, but is rewarded by becoming a Grey Warden. Are our rules nothing? Have we lost all authority over our mages? This does not bode well, Irving."

This is not the first time Greagoir has talked about the mages of the Circle like they're his dogs. Marian stamps on the familiar outrage simmering in her veins before she makes any more trouble; she is for the Wardens now, and speaking up at this point in the conversation is probably a bad idea. 

Irving sighs. "Peace, Greagoir. We have no more say in this matter."

"What now?" Marian asks Duncan.

Duncan takes her elbow and steers her gently toward the hallway that leads to the front doors. "We must make our way to Ostagar, where the king's army is camped. You will be initiated there. I will explain more when the time comes."

Marian packs while Duncan retrieves his things from the second floor; she rips open the straw bedding of her tiny bunk bed in the apprentice dorm and retrieves the only two things in the world she cares about: the toys she'd stolen from the twins before she left home. She stuffs them into the bottom of her pack and covers them with clothing and any spare rags she can find in the lavatory. There are a few apprentices watching her, but none of them try to speak to her, and she ignores them as much as she can. They've probably heard all about her offenses already; the Tower gossips are very efficient.

Duncan is waiting for her with two saddlebags when she comes out of the dorm. "Are you ready?" he asks.

Marian nods. There is nothing left for her here, and no one to say goodbye to.

"Good," he says, and leads them to the front doors; the templars guarding them let them pass, and then she is free.


	6. The Hinterlands

Marian has not been on a horse in ten years, and she has never been on a horse alone. Her arse is not happy about the change.

Duncan has kept her riding hard since they left the Tower, and she is _tired_ , body and soul. A curious numbness has insinuated itself between her and her emotions, and while she is grateful for it, Marian knows it won't last. Her dreams tonight should be... interesting. She's disinclined to do anything except stare at her horse's ears. 

Her horse slows and steps carefully off the road and through a field to the left. She glances up only to find that Duncan has taken her horse's trailing reins; he's guiding them to a ruined cottage, with thatch half gone and what looks like half a tree taking root inside. It's so _dark_ ; Marian is used to the Tower, where light is cheap and the library lamps are left burning all night long. The cottage is surrounded by trees, and the shadows underneath their branches are deep and liquid.

"I use this place as a way station," Duncan says, bringing his horse to a stop with his heels. Her horse drifts forward a little, but he stops eventually. "You would do well to remember it; there is an intact fireplace under the side with the roof."

Marian nods and then, sighing, she more or less rolls herself off the saddle and drops down to the ground. She can't quite help the pained noise she makes – she is _incredibly_ sore – but Duncan says nothing, only glances at her and dismounts himself, leading their horses around the back of the cottage. Marian follows, for lack of anything else to do, and finds him already picketing them in a small clearing partially overshadowed by a tree. 

When he starts to take the saddle and other things off of his own horse, Marian watches him for a moment and then steps to her horse, copying him as best she can with her height disadvantage and hands unused to the task. Duncan smiles his approval, and her mouth turns up a little in response; then she accepts the cloth he hands her, and they rub the horses down. It's soothing, in a way; the motions are repetitive, and the horse makes some sort of happy noises when she figures out what she's doing. She lets her mind drift, and she's surprised when Duncan takes her hand. 

"They're all right now," he says, and takes the cloth. 

"Oh, good," Marian says, a little disappointed. She scratches her horse on his shoulder, and he amiably turns his head and butts her in the stomach.

Duncan laughs. "You've made a friend," he says, and gestures for her to precede him into the cottage. "I'll be in after I water them."

She hesitates on the verge of crossing into the interior, but it's not much darker inside than it is out; the roof lets in a bit of starlight, and she can see where to put her feet to avoid the cracked paving stones that floor the cottage. The tree growing through the wall yields a few dead, dry sticks and Marian builds a tiny fire on a bare stone, lighting it with her thumb. It will last long enough for her to ask Duncan if he wants a real fire for the night.

Marian looks around for a bit of ground that's flatter than the rest; when she finds some along one wall, she lies down and stuffs her pack under her head. It will make as good a pillow as any. She folds her hands neatly over her stomach and stares up, through the branches of the nameless tree. They sway a little in a higher breeze and she watches them make patterns with the stars in the night sky. It is fully dark now, and the little fire she's made casts a cheerful light to keep her company.

Duncan has to duck his head to come in through the hole that was once a door. When he sees her little fire, he smiles and turns back to bar the doorway with the remains of the door. "We should be up with first light," he says, settling himself on the ground. "But we have time to eat, and you must have questions."

He offers her some crusty bread and cheese – she recognizes the Circle's mark on the bread – and a little salted cod from his packs, and they eat in companionable silence. 

When they're done, Duncan offers her his bedroll; Marian accepts, under no illusions about how she's going to sleep tonight. She may as well be comfortable while she tosses and turns. She freezes her little fire and lies back, counting stars.

"How long have you been in the Circle?" he asks, when she says nothing.

"Ten years," Marian answers. She debates the pros and cons of telling him about her family; it can't make any difference to him either way, she finally decides, and a lifetime of holding her secrets close keeps her silent. "What can I expect my life to be now?"

Duncan is silent longer than she thinks the question warrants; she wonders if he's fallen asleep on her already, though it seems unlikely. She turns her head and scrutinizes his face in the pale, pale light of the new moon, just cresting through the tree branches; he looks sad.

Finally, he says, "In times of peace, Wardens train, and recruit, and watch for signs of the next Blight. Darkspawn make their way to the surface in smaller numbers whenever they find an exit from the Deep Roads, even when there is no Blight, and we must drive them back."

Marian frowns. "But that's not what's happening right now, is it?"

"No," Duncan admits. "The darkspawn are attacking en masse from the south. It may be that a Blight is coming."

"What makes it a Blight, instead of quite a lot of darkspawn?"

"An archdemon," Duncan says, his voice dropping. "You know the story?"

Marian laughs, little more than a huff of air. "It was the Revered Mother's favorite bedtime story in the Tower. The magisters corrupted the Golden City with their greed and wickedness and created the curse of the darkspawn," she repeats in a sing-song voice. " _You have brought Sin to Heaven_ / _And doom upon all the world_. That's one lesson the Chantry doesn't want us to forget in a hurry. And, of course, whose fault it is."

"The darkspawn seek out the Old Gods," Duncan says. "They're drawn to them, and when they find one, the taint corrupts it. It awakens, in that moment, as a darkspawn of hideous power, and it leads the horde against the surface peoples. A Blight."

She shivers. After a moment, she asks, "And then Wardens fight?"

"Yes," Duncan agrees. "Then we fight."

They lie in silence for a while, and then Duncan asks for the details of her training; she is most proficient in the Primal spells. Entropy is her particular weakness. He wants to hear about her Harrowing, and there she tells him as little as she can get away with; she knows that he noticed her reticence, but she doesn't particularly care. She doesn't want to think about Mouse, or what he almost tricked her into doing.

"Your willpower saw you through your test," Duncan tells her, and she wonders if he has a sideline as a mind-reader. "Trust it; it will not fail you." 

It's a cryptic statement that makes no sense to her, but Marian doesn't ask what he means; something in his voice stops her. He's not taking questions anymore.

"Thank you for recruiting me," she says instead. _Thank you for rescuing me._

"Thank me tomorrow," Duncan says coolly, and she turns away from him to face the wall. 

She means to sleep, but sleep is not coming. Her mind is playing cruel tricks on her, replaying every instant of her Harrowing, of Jowan's pleas; how had she allowed herself to be gulled so badly? 

She'd trusted Mouse. She'd trusted Jowan, too. It burns to realize that despite every oath she'd sworn to herself, she's just as much of a trusting fool as anyone else.

Marian sleeps fitfully, struggling with dreams that make no sense but leave her apprehensive when Duncan shakes her awake. They're on the road as soon as they re-saddle the horses, but no matter what she does, she can't seem to shake the lingering dread; four days later, when she catches sight of Ostagar in the distance, the looming, broken tips of the fortress seem to welcome her with cruel hands.


	7. The Ruins

When they began the journey, Marian thought she was in pain. Today she _knows_ she's in pain, a sadistic, grating pain that echoes through her bones and sinks deep into her muscles. It radiates from her arse up to mid-back and down through her knees. The stableman who takes her reins smirks as he leads her horse away, and she entertains thoughts of fireballing him until his head is the consistency of meat paste, but Duncan taps her on the shoulder and distracts her. 

"This way," Duncan says, gesturing to the path leading into the fortress. It leads through truly gigantic arches to a path well-worn by many feet. She looks at the path and grimaces at the idea of walking, and Duncan must see the thought on her face, because he takes her arm and begins to lead her up the way. "I apologize for riding us so hard on the way here, but it was truly necessary," he says. "I cannot be absent on the eve of battle."

"I'll be fine," Marian says, and wills it to be so. It surprises her when it actually works, or maybe it's moving under her own power again; in any case, she feels less like she's going to die, and she detaches herself from Duncan's gently guiding hand with a smile. 

Ostagar is situated on the top of a sharply inclined hill, and the path up to the main fortress is a series of switchbacks designed for artillery, built on the grand scale favored by the Tevinters.

It would be beautiful if she didn't have to climb to get there. 

She follows Duncan up the path, keeping her eyes locked on his back; if she looks one more time to see how far they have yet to climb she's going to throw herself off the path and let gravity do what it will. 

They reach the top and the switchbacks end, funneling into a single path that seems to bisect the ruins. The view is even more spectacular from here; she can see forever, it seems, over deep forest and swamp. Marian hurries a little to walk next to Duncan rather than a step behind and to the left, and that's when a giant in golden armor steps out, beaming at Duncan.

"Ho there, Duncan!" the giant calls.

"King Cailan?" Duncan says, surprised. He clasps forearms with the king while Marian hovers awkwardly in the background. "I wasn't expecting – "

"A royal welcome?" Cailan interjects. He laughs. "I was beginning to worry you'd miss all the fun!"

Duncan bows a little. "Not if I could help it, your Majesty."

The king is... not what she expected. He seems a little foolish, if truth be told, and it leaves her wondering how old he actually is. He's not as tall as she thought, either; he's only Duncan's height, and she doesn't think of _him_ as a giant. Perhaps it's the very shiny armor.

Cailan laughs again, clapping Duncan on the shoulder. "Then I'll have the mighty Duncan at my side in battle after all! Glorious!" He glances past Duncan at Marian, as if he is just noticing her. "The other Wardens told me you've found a promising recruit. I take it this is she?"

"Allow me to introduce you, your Majesty," Duncan says, gesturing to Marian.

"No need to be so formal, Duncan. We'll be shedding blood together, after all." Cailan turns to Marian, and while she's not impressed with his kingly demeanor, she's still bizarrely nervous; she's never met a king before, and she's not sure how to behave. "Ho there, friend!" he says, smiling. "Might I know your name?"

Marian ruthlessly stamps on the part of her that wants to be sarcastic, and answers, "Marian Amell, your Majesty." She follows Duncan's lead and bows a little, awkward with anxiety.

"Pleased to meet you! The Grey Wardens are desperate to bolster their numbers, and I, for one, am glad to help them." He seems genuinely pleased, and Marian relaxes a little. She smiles back. "I understand you hail from the Circle of Magi. I trust you have some spells to help us in the coming battle?"

"I will do my best, of course," she says cautiously. "But I've never been in battle before. I can make no guarantees."

"I understand," Cailan says, smiling a little. "We were all wet behind the ears once. We have several other mages here; perhaps one of them might ease your mind." 

Marian had heard that some of the senior enchanters had left the Tower; at the time, she was busy studying, so she has no idea who might be here. It's not a bad idea, actually, and she looks at her king with more respect. Cailan's smile broadens, and Marian instantly feels herself flush red; somehow she's sure he knows what she's thinking. All her awkwardness returns.

"I'm sure the Wardens will benefit greatly with you in their ranks."

Marian mumbles something that sounds grateful in her head and retreats, thankful, when Cailan turns back to Duncan to continue their conversation. She lets it go in one ear and out the other as she brings herself back under control, an exercise of will that was one of the first things she'd learned in the Tower.

When she begins to pay attention again, Duncan gestures for her to move away; she does, but curiosity drives her to stay within earshot. "Your uncle sends greetings, your Majesty," he says softly. "And reminds you that Redcliffe forces could be here in less than a week."

Cailan snorts. "Eamon wants a piece of the glory, I'm sure," he says in the same soft tones, staring out over the Wilds. "Tomorrow will be no different than the last three battles. I'm not even sure this _is_ a Blight, to be honest."

"You doubt me?" Duncan's voice is unusually severe.

"Of course not," Cailan hastens to say. "But... there's been no sign of the archdemon."

"Are you disappointed, your Majesty?"

Cailan sighs and steps away, turning toward his guards. "I'd hoped for a war like in the tales," he says, his voice suddenly louder. Marian frowns, confused. "Imagine, a king riding with the fabled Grey Wardens against a tainted god!" He turns, laughing, and Marian is suddenly struck by how handsome the king is, even if he is a little weak, a little foolish. A golden king, set against the darkspawn; yes, Marian can see where the stories will start already. 

"If I'm any later, Loghain will send out a search party," Cailan says. "Farewell, Grey Wardens!" And then there's nothing to do but bow as he walks away. 

Marian blows out a silent breath and gives fleeting thought to the hope that she hasn't made a total fool of herself in front of the king of all Ferelden; then she forces herself to forget it. 

"Well, isn't _he_ confident," Marian says without thinking, then frowns. Something about it seems off, though she can't put her finger on why. Something about _Cailan_ seems off. 

She puts that away to think about later too – the list of things she's promised herself to think about later is longer than her arm – when Duncan begins leading her into the fortress proper. "They've won several battles against the darkspawn here," he says. "Perhaps he has good reason to be confident."

Marian takes a long look at Duncan, who seems entirely unconcerned. "Yet you don't seem entirely reassured."

"The horde grows larger with each passing day," he says. "By now, it's likely that they outnumber us. I _know_ that there is an archdemon behind this, and an archdemon can command hordes larger than anything we have yet seen..." Duncan sighs a little. "But I cannot ask the king to act solely on my feeling."

"Why not?" Marian asks. "At least he'd listen to you, unlike that other poor sod he was talking about." Something moves in Duncan's face like she's pained him, but she rushes on, unwilling to wait to see where she's put her foot in it this time. "What would you advise him to do?"

"We sent a call out west to the Wardens of Orlais," Duncan says, his face smoothing back into calm. "It will be many days before they can join us, but they will reinforce our numbers several times over. I would have the king simply wait."

"Waiting doesn't seem like his strong suit," Marian says as they descend a small set of steps that lead down to a bridge splayed out over a deep, tree-filled crevasse. Duncan stops and so does she, but that leaves her nowhere to look except out into the wilds.

Everywhere she looks, there's scenery and outdoors and height and depth; every time she looks up, she's overwhelmed by the way the sky seems to go on forever in all directions. Her hand tightens on the strap of her pack. 

"It's not," Duncan admits with a smile. "We must do what we can and look to Teyrn Loghain to make up the difference." He enunciates the name very clearly, and Marian suddenly realizes who he's talking about, and who she'd just called a poor sod. 

Duncan laughs and kindly leaves the matter. "We should proceed with your Joining ritual without delay."

Marian looks up, her attention caught by his mention of a ritual. "Right now?" She doesn't dare rub her arse, not right in front of Duncan, but she desperately wants to – it _hurts_. 

Perhaps he can guess what's on her mind, because he grins and gestures over the bridge to the other side of the fortress. "We have until nightfall; you may wander as you will, but don't leave the camp. When you're ready, find a Grey Warden named Alistair and tell him it's time to summon the other recruits."

"Alistair," Marian repeats to remember the name. "Got it."

"Until then, I have business I must attend to. I will be at the Grey Warden encampment, which is on the other side of the bridge and to the left, should you have need." Duncan bows to her, just a dip of his head, then strides off across the bridge.

She is alone for the first time in a very long time. The army camps are far enough away that they're little more than muted bursts of sound when the wind shifts, which happens just enough to remind her that there are other people in the world. Marian shivers suddenly and, taking a tight grip on the straps of her pack, heads across the bridge.

A friendly soldier points the way to the magi encampment and Marian heads that way. She can see a few mages inside, but she can also see another mage in the distance, one she recognizes.

"Wynne!"

Wynne turns, and when she sees Marian she smiles. "Marian! I heard that the new Grey Warden recruit was from the Circle, but I didn't think Irving would let you out of the Tower."

"He didn't have much of a choice," Marian says, grimacing, and lets her pack slide to the ground. "Listen, I hate to ask, but do you have a rejuvenate in you? The ride here was absolute murder."

"If you'd paid more attention in my classes..." Wynne says, narrowing her eyes, but Marian can feel the cool wash of a rejuvenation spell seep into her skin. The pain in her back and legs begins to fade.

"Oh, _thank_ you," Marian says, but Wynne cocks her head; then she feels a healing spell on top of the other.

"You shouldn't have let it get that bad," Wynne says, folding her arms. "And if you're going to be a Grey Warden, it's time you learned more than just the basic healing spells."

"I know," Marian says with a groan. "Well, now that I've passed my Harrowing, I'll have more time to learn other things."

"Congratulations! How did you do?"

Marian snorts. "Well, I passed," she says, gesturing vaguely to herself. "But I don't feel like I did. There was... " She pauses, waiting for the right words to come to her. "The demon, it... "

"Ah," Wynne says, tilting her head. "Mouse up to his old tricks?"

Marian stares at her, dumbfounded.

"You don't think you're the only one who fell for his tricks, do you?" Wynne asks, in a tone that Marian knows means that someone is being stupid and will be called to the front of the class for a demonstration. "Mouse has been Harrowing Fereldan apprentices for years, child. He has it down to a science. You slipped his grip, I take it?" Marian nods. "That's all that matters in the end. That, and now you know what lengths the demons will go to," Wynne says. Her voice has slipped into lecture mode, but Marian is too grateful to mind. "You must always be on guard in the Fade. You must make no agreements and make no choices, if you can help it."

It's more plain speaking than Marian's ever heard before. "Why don't you tell us this _before_ the Harrowing?" she asks, bewildered. "Wouldn't it help?"

"It would," Wynne agrees. "If all we cared for was keeping mages alive. But we need to know who is susceptible to a demon's temptations, and the Harrowing is the way that has evolved over many years. It seems harsh, I know, but the truth is often so."

Marian stares, horrified. " _Seems_?" she says, then clenches her teeth until she thinks her jaw might crack; arguing with Wynne is always a terrible idea, always, but the utter heartlessness of what she's just said – and apparently believes – is too much to bear. "You know they took Killian, right? And Alys? And _Jowan_ – " Her voice breaks, and she stops. She doesn't want to talk about that, and if she's absolutely truthful, Jowan was responsible for his own fate... but he would never have done what he did if he hadn't been terrified beyond reason of the Harrowing, and the Rite of Tranquility.

"They did not survive, I take it?" Wynne asks, and closes her eyes. "Maker preserve them," she murmurs. She looks honestly upset; Killian was Wynne's own special protégé, with not only a gift, but a flair for healing. Marian pushes away the shame she feels rising from her belly.

 _She deserves it_ , Marian tells herself. If only she could believe it. 

"Duncan has given me a task; do you know the Warden named Alistair?"

"Oh, that one," Wynne says with a roll of her eyes. "You'll find him to the north, I believe. Follow the shouting."

Wynne refuses to elaborate, and a confused Marian picks up her pack and follows the path north to a small ramp. There aren't very many people around; a few elves are to the west, cleaning around a large table, and to the east is a small rotunda. There's no shouting, but there is a raised voice coming from the rotunda, and Marian heads for it.

There are two men there; one is berating at the other, who is waiting patiently for him to finish with a kind of calculated insolence. Marian recognizes the loud one as a mage, though she doesn't know his name; the other is a young man, about her age, wearing Grey Warden livery. She has no intention of getting between an angry mage and his target, so she leans against a handy bit of wall and waits for them to finish.

The mage storms off when he's done shouting, and Marian straightens when Alistair turns to her. He seems have shrugged off the confrontation as soon as it happened, a talent which Marian envies. 

"You know, one good thing about the Blight is how it brings people together," he says, smirking. 

"Are you Alistair?" Marian asks.

"That's me. You're... you're the Grey Warden recruit Duncan brought, aren't you?" Alistair frowns a bit, digging furrows in his brow.

Marian recognizes the signs of an inveterate forgetter of names and leaps to his rescue. "I'm Marian. Pleased to meet you."

"That was the name!" Alistair says, snapping his fingers. "Sorry, I'm – " 

"Bad at names? No kidding," she says, a slow grin crossing her face. He seems like a friendly sort. "That mage wasn't interested in togetherness; if you'd been any closer, I'm pretty sure he would have fireballed himself to get away." 

"Really? You think so?" Alistair asks, clearly pleased at the idea. "I'll have to keep that in mind." He looks her over, and when he sees the staff poking out from behind her shoulder, he winces. "I don't suppose you happen to be another mage?"

"What gave it away?" Marian slaps her staff with shocking disregard for its formidable offensive capabilities. She sends a sly look Alistair's way. "Would that make your day worse?"

"Hardly," he says, though he does look like he wishes he could hide behind his shield. "I just like to know my chances of being turned into a toad at any given moment."

Marian tilts her head, considering. "Fair to middling?"

"Good to know," he says, chuckling uneasily. 

"Oh!" Marian exclaims. "Duncan wanted me to get you; he said it's time to summon the other recruits."

Alistair looks so relieved that she has to laugh. "Lead on, then," he says, and she does.

"So who was that man?" she asks him as they walk down the ramps toward the camp proper. 

"Enchanter Rydell," Alistair says, grimacing. He has an expressive face; it's easy to tell what he's thinking. She keeps catching herself staring at him. "Cranky bugger, isn't he? The Revered Mother sent me to fetch him. I suppose he has reason to be put out that she sent me, though," he admits, watching her out of the corner of his eye. "It was a calculated kind of insult. I was once a templar."

Marian stops dead and whirls on him. "You're a _templar_?" 

She thought she'd left templars behind forever. Was she never to be free of them? And for it to be _him_ – she'd liked him a moment ago, when he laughed at her jokes and treated her like a real person, not just a mage. 

A new and more horrible thought strikes her – she'd heard in the Tower that mages who went outside the Tower are assigned their very own templars, who follow them around like mabari ready to strike. 

Perhaps Duncan is more prepared for a mage recruit than he let on.

"Yes," Alistair says, pausing beside her. His face is faintly alarmed, and Marian starts working out the best way to petrify him – templars can't smite if they can't move, right? – and then make a break for the exit. It must show on her face, because he puts up his hands defensively. "Well, half a templar. Three-quarters? The point is, I never finished my training, I didn't want to be there in the first place, _please_ don't turn me into a toad."

Marian pauses in reaching for her staff. "What do you mean you didn't want to be there in the first place?" 

Alistair hesitates and drops his hands, and Marian is sure that he's deciding how much to tell her; eventually he sighs. "Look, I was given to the Chantry a long time ago. I didn't exactly have a choice in the matter, and then when the Revered Mother decided I was to be a Templar... Well, it was better than the other options." He chuckles, though there's a grim edge to it Marian doesn't understand. "I meant it when I said I didn't want to be there, you know. When Duncan recruited me, it was the best day of my life." 

Alistair spreads his arms in what looks to her like the beginning of a smite and Marian instinctively flinches, stepping backward quickly. Alistair freezes. "I'm not – " He sighs loudly, dropping his arms. His armor creaks in protest at his sudden movements. "I'm not a Templar anymore." He raps one gauntleted fist on his cuirass, where the Grey Warden griffons are emblazoned; Marian belatedly realizes that's what he'd been trying to do before. "I'm a Grey Warden," he says earnestly. "Maker willing, so will you be."

A slow flush of shame begins to work its way up her neck. She knows better than to believe that every templar is like the worst of them, but Marian has spent so long hating them and when finally she escapes, there is Alistair; how can anyone blame her for feeling trapped? But she is leaping to conclusions; she can at least wait until those conclusions are warranted. _Then_ she can fireball Alistair's head into paste and make her escape.

"I don't know a toad spell," Marian confesses. 

"Thank the Maker," he says with a grin. "Porcupines? Cockroaches? Skunks? No?"

She returns his smile, trying to act like nothing has changed, then she turns and starts to walk again, leading the way although she doesn't know who she's looking for or where she's going; Alistair follows her without comment until she turns her head to look at him. "The templars took me away when I was little," she says, thinking of a tow-headed little boy with hazel eyes, alone in a little bed in an anonymous Chantry dormitory. "To be a mage at the Circle. I know what it's like not to have choices."

"Sounds like we both owe Duncan, then," Alistair says. He's not smiling, but his face is open and warm. 

"You might be right," Marian allows. 

She swoops in and rescues Daveth from the consequences of antagonizing women who wield swords, promises a magical blight-curing flower to the kennel-keeper, and disentangles Ser Jory from a Chantry service; Marian refuses the sister's blessing and walks away in the middle of her ranting. _The likes of me_ , she fumes. _If I were the kind of mage you're so afraid of, I'd_...

And that stops her train of thought in its tracks, because they have every right to be afraid. Mages are more destructive than nature, than the worst of wild animals, than any of the sentient species, because they are all these things and more, and there will never be any way for her to put her magic down. 

Chastened and silent, she follows Alistair to join Duncan and the other two recruits at his fire.

Duncan greets them with a smile. "You found Alistair, did you?"

"I followed the shouting," Marian says, looking at Alistair from the corner of her eye. He flushes a little. She debates asking Duncan about the conclusions she'd leapt to earlier, but it's not the time, not in front of the others.

"Good. I'll assume you're ready to begin preparations," Duncan says, then turns to Alistair, a sardonic eyebrow raised. "Assuming, of course, that you're quite finished riling up mages, Alistair."

Alistair returns an uneasy smile. "What can I say? The revered mother ambushed me. The way she wields guilt, they should stick her in the army."

"She forced you to sass the mage, did she?" Duncan sighs, in a way that makes Marian think he's done it before. Alistair must be something of a trial, and Daveth won't be any better. It makes her wonder why Duncan recruited them; Ser Jory seems the only sensible choice. "We cannot afford to antagonize anyone, Alistair," Duncan says. "We don't need to give anyone more ammunition against us."

"You're right, Duncan." Alistair takes a deep breath. "I... apologize." It sounds like something he's not used to doing very often.

Duncan smiles faintly, approvingly, and lets it go. "Now that you're all here, we can begin. You four will be heading into the Korcari Wilds to perform two tasks. The first is to obtain three vials of darkspawn blood, one for each recruit."

"Into the Wilds?" Daveth objects. "There's other things than darkspawn in there. There's witches, there's _the_ witch - the Witch of the Wilds."

"Are you refusing?" Duncan asks politely, but Marian freezes like a mouse that's seen a snake; there's something of a blade being drawn from its sheath in his voice, something she never, ever wants turned on her.

"N-no," Daveth says, uncertainly.

"Good." Duncan turns back to the rest of them. Daveth licks his lips, just once. 

"Surely the army has already spilled enough darkspawn blood," Ser Jory says. "Is it truly necessary for us to collect more?"

"You must work together to collect the components. It's just as much a part of the Joining as what comes after," Duncan replies. 

"What else do you need us to do?" Alistair asks.

"There was once a Grey Warden archive in the Wilds, abandoned long ago when we could no longer afford to maintain such remote outputs. It has recently come to our attention that some scrolls have been left behind, magically sealed to protect them. Alistair, I want you to retrieve these scrolls if you can."

"What if they're not there anymore?" Marian asks. 

"It's possible the scrolls may have been destroyed or even stolen, though the seal's magic should have protected them. Only a Grey Warden can break such a seal."

Duncan sounds confident, but Marian can think of a dozen things that can go wrong even if they find the missing scrolls, and none of them are good. She's not even sure she wants to be a Warden, and all this seems like excellent reason to melt into the Wilds and start on her own quest to find her long-lost family. It's something that bears thinking about, in any case, and she may as well have a plan for fleeing, even if she never uses it.

"I don't understand," Alistair says, bewildered. "Why leave such things in a ruin if they're so valuable?"

"It was assumed we would someday return," Duncan says, a faint note of regret in his voice. "A great many things were assumed that have not held true."

"So, darkspawn blood and ancient scrolls?" Marian says. 

Daveth sighs. "I suppose we'd better get to it before the light goes."

Duncan nods. "Alistair, watch over your charges. Return quickly, and safely."

Alistair nods in return, so serious that Marian could almost believe that his earlier foolishness was a dream. "We will."

"Then may the Maker watch over your path. I will see you when you return." Duncan turns back to his fire, dismissing them, and Alistair leads them to the barred gates that open out into the Wilds.


	8. The Wilds

They are attacked almost immediately upon leaving the gates, not by darkspawn, but by a large pack of wolves. Marian stays in the background as Alistair and Ser Jory draw sword and shield and Daveth moves to the mid-range between her and the other men, drawing his bow and nocking arrow to string.

Her only experience in fighting with swordsmen so far has been with Lily, back at the tower, and immediately it's clear that there's miles between her and the men in front of her. Alistair in particular is surprisingly lethal, but Ser Jory holds his own, swinging his greatsword in huge, powerful arcs to keep the wolves away from his undefended back while he takes on one wolf that's larger than the rest.

Marian starts there, freezing one wolf and setting another on fire; she's hoping it'll panic and run away or set the rest alight, but after her spell effect wears off, the fire flickers and dies quickly. _Lesson one: flesh doesn't burn_. The wolf is clearly injured, however, and Marian peppers it with arcane bolts until it falls. Alistair has already killed the one she froze and moved on.

At this range, she can watch the battle like a play, directing spells where they'll do the most good. It's easy to see when one of her fellow recruits is in trouble, or to take an opportunity to use one of her few spells that work on more than one creature at a time. 

She casts cone of lightning at two wolves who have allowed themselves to be herded together. At the same time, Jory draws back from an overhand lunge to the alpha wolf's body, and he moves back into a ready position, which Marian realizes too late puts him directly in the path of her cone.

Jory screams, back arching and sightless eyes staring at the sky. He drops his sword. Marian pulls her magic back into her hands as fast as she can, wincing at the burn, but it's too late; Jory drops to the ground, boneless, and doesn't get up. She tosses a heal at him through smarting palms and freezes the last wolf in time for Alistair to shatter it with his shield.

" _Damn_ it!" Marian says, racing forward and dropping to her knees next to Jory with a thump. Alistair stabs one of the dead wolves in the head, making her jump, but he goes to the next and does the same, methodically going through all the dead bodies. _He's just making sure they're dead_ , she tells herself, willing her racing heart to calm.

Jory is not dead, but unconscious; she doesn't know what he looked like before her off-the-cuff heal spell worked its magic, but the scales on his scalemail are smoking and charred, and the flesh on his neck is hot when she tests it with her hand. But he is still warm, even though he is not breathing, and she can't find any wounds on his exposed skin... Marian frowns and cups her hand, letting her magic run into it like a puddle. Daveth says something behind her, but he is easy to ignore. She wills it into lightning and when it has obeyed, she pours it onto Jory's chest, over his heart; it flows straight through his scalemail, through the thick weave of his gambeson and onto his skin. Jory's chest jumps up in the air like a thing possessed, but he still does not breathe. _Again_ , she commands, and this time when the lightning strikes he gasps, his eyes flying open.

Marian sits back on her heels and allows herself to feel tired. After a minute, Jory's breathing regains a more normal rhythm and he struggles to sit up.

"What was _that_?" Daveth demands, his eyes wide. 

Marian stands, brushing dirt off her robes. "What, saving his life?"

Alistair glances at her and then away, to Jory, who is examining his hands like he's never seen them before. He reaches down and pulls Jory to his feet. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," Ser Jory says, somewhat dazed. 

Alistair cocks an eyebrow at Marian. "The Wardens frown on electrocuting your fellow recruit, just so you know," he says pleasantly.

Marian wants to make a face and taunt him a little, but this is not the wisecracking Alistair she'd met earlier; instead she turns to Ser Jory and apologizes. 

After retrieving Ser Jory's sword, they press on into the Wilds. It's quieter than Marian expected, and Daveth seems to think so too, because he's looking around and frowning. 

"Is that normal for wolves?" she asks. "I read that they don't normally come that close to people."

Daveth says, "Wolves behave differently in the Wilds." 

"The Blight can change the way animals act," Alistair says. "They can catch the taint just the same as people, but there are visual signs in that case – they go all twisted and corrupted like people do. Or the darkspawn could be eating whatever the animals normally eat."

Marian feels a twist of pity knotting up her guts. 

"I know," Alistair says in a lower voice, surprising her into looking up. She hadn't realized he'd dropped back to walk beside her. "But they attacked us. I wouldn't have killed them if I'd had a choice, and neither would you."

She smiles a little, a thank you, and he returns it in shared sympathy. They walk on through lush ground cover and along a small pond when Ser Jory shouts from the front. "Warden!"

Alistair breaks into a jog and leaves Marian to follow as best she can, cursing the mage robes she wears. Daveth and Ser Jory are crouched around a soldier wearing the king's standard, who lies directly in their path. There's a bloody trail crushed through the grass and plants that stretches as far as she can see; he's been crawling back to Ostagar for days, at a guess. 

Marian can see his chest rise and fall, very weakly. "He's still breathing," she says, drawing her staff.

"Wardens?" the soldier gasps. 

"Yes," Alistair says, crouching at his head. "You're right," he says to Marian. "He's not half as dead as he looks."

Marian lightly sets the butt of her staff on the soldier's back, over his heart, and casts the only healing spell she knows.

"They came out of the ground... " the soldier says, struggling up onto his hands and knees. Marian moves her staff with the man, doing her best to keep the weight of it off him; she's forcing pure magic into him, her best healing thoughts along with it. It's the best she can do without her standard healing spell. "My whole scouting unit, they're all gone. I've got to – I've got to get back to camp."

Alistair helps the soldier onto his feet, and Marian lets her staff drop. He seems stronger now, and limps away with only a little difficulty. The gates aren't far, and he'll be within shouting distance in a few minutes.

"Did you hear?" Ser Jory says, when the soldier is out of earshot. "An entire patrol of seasoned men killed by darkspawn!" His voice is perilously close to panic.

Marian will admit to having some of the same craven thoughts, but she's not fool enough to think that saying so out loud will somehow magically change what they have to do.

"We'll be fine if we're careful," Alistair says patiently. 

"Those soldiers were careful, and they were still overwhelmed."

"How do you know that?" Marian asks.

Jory barrels on, ignoring her. "How many darkspawn can the four of us slay? A dozen? A hundred? And that's _if_ little miss there can correct her aim," he says, glaring at Marian. "There's an entire _army_ in these forests!"

"There are darkspawn about, but we're in no danger of walking into the bulk of the horde." There is less patience and more warning now. 

"How do you know?" Jory keeps going with a tenacity that surprises Marian. "I'm not a coward, but this is foolish and reckless. We should go back." 

"If you have to point out that you're not a coward, maybe you're doing something wrong," Daveth says, speaking with apparent unconcern to a nearby tree.

"Duncan knows what's out here," Marian says. "He said this is part of the Joining. Do you really want to go back empty-handed?"

"I know I don't," Daveth agrees.

"Know this: All Grey Wardens can sense darkspawn," Alistair says to Jory, soothing like he's a child. "Whatever their cunning, I guarantee they won't take us by surprise. That's why I'm here."

Marian rolls her eyes and turns away from the men, examining the edges of the small clearing. The Wilds were much greener than she expected from the ride in, lush with trees and smaller plants dotting the ground between ponds that range between ankle-deep and waist-high. They're on the edge of one of the ponds, and there's an old bit of ruined wall leaning over nearby.

Underneath is a tall flower, white with a red center, which looks exactly like the one the kennel-master asked her to search for. She plucks it, root ball and all, and wraps it in a spare cloth before stowing it in her pack. 

"Picking flowers?" Alistair asks, leaning over her shoulder, and she nearly screams. She does jump and he backs away quickly, laughing. "Sorry, I couldn't help it."

Marian glares, but relents after a moment. "It's for that mabari," she explains, tossing her pack onto her back and standing. "What now?"

"Let's get a move on," Alistair suggests, and they follow him deeper into the Wilds.

The sun is setting when they find their first pack of darkspawn, noisily digging through what looks like a human campsite, complete with supplies and tents pitched in a convenient corner of Tevinter ruins. They take a precious second to coordinate strategy before the darkspawn notice them, but then the wind changes and one of the bigger ones raises its head, sniffing before its head snaps around and fixes on them. It screams in rage, calling the rest of the darkspawn. 

Marian picks up her skirts and races forward before the darkspawn can spread out around them; she can hear the men following close behind her, and she skids to a stop when she judges she's just within range of her cone spells. She fries two short ones before they can react, and then Alistair is there with a bellow, cutting between her and the pack to draw them off. An arrow sings past her ear to lodge in a darkspawn's throat; it screams and flings itself at Marian, or maybe it's trying to get past her to Daveth, but Jory's there with a huge swing that starts somewhere over his head and ends chest-deep in the darkspawn. 

Marian freezes the largest one to give Alistair, who is fighting it and two other short ones, some breathing room, and turns to take on one of the archers, which is hiding amongst the ruins. She takes an unnecessarily long time to deal with it, and when she turns back, Daveth is a whirl of long knives defending Alistair, who is dripping blood from his side and fending off the big one she'd frozen before. 

_Lesson two: frost spells wear off_ , she thinks, furious with herself. She bats a heal spell at Alistair and a directed lightning strike at the large darkspawn. Jory looks back from the other side of the clearing, where he's been fighting the other archer; he curses and starts to jog back, but Alistair surprises them all with a sudden, explosive lunge, burying his sword in the darkspawn giant's face. 

The giant falls backwards, and Alistair lets go of his sword, but it might have been the only thing holding him up, because he falls backward. He lets out a giant breath, or maybe he knocks all the air out of his lungs, it's impossible to be sure. She's by his side in a second, but he flaps his hands at her, even though he doesn't seem to be breathing. 

"Fine," he croaks. He pushes her at Daveth, but when she turns her head Daveth is burying his daggers in the darkspawn's spine, and it goes down. 

"He doesn't need help," Marian says, turning back to Alistair. "You do." For a second, she wishes Wynne were here – healing is decidedly not her specialty, and that seems to be all she's doing! – but then she puts that aside. With gentle fingers she peels apart the leather brigandine Alistair wears under his cuirass, only to find a longish scratch, lazily seeping blood. The skin and leather around her fingers are saturated in blood; she must have already healed his wound. 

"It's nothing," she says to Alistair, smiling. "It's almost healed." She lays a hand on his cuirass, pushing out with her magic the way Wynne taught her, and probes his lungs; they're fine as well, and he's done no injury to his back. 

"Just catch your breath," she says, leaning over him. "You're fine." 

"They're all dead," Daveth adds, standing while he cleans his daggers. He puts them back in their sheaths while Marian watches, fascinated; she can't believe she didn't notice them earlier, but when they're fully engaged with the sheaths, they practically disappear behind the leather straps. 

"There's more to you than meets the eye," she says to Daveth.

He winks at her and stoops down to retrieve his bow. She laughs and looks back down at Alistair, who looks a little disconcerted. "What? He saved your life."

Alistair shakes his head and cranes his head to check for Jory.

A little while later, Alistair can speak in more than one word sentences and levers himself up off the ground, ignoring Jory's offered hand. "You should collect your vials," he says, and Marian could smack herself for forgetting. "There should be enough here for all three of you."

Alistair shows them how to slit the darkspawns' throats down the artery instead of along it, and how to scrape up the blood with the lip of the vial to avoid getting it on their hands. He folds one of the darkspawn up to force the blood to flow more quickly for Marian, who he insists should wash her hands as soon as possible. 

"It's just blood," she says blankly. It's not the first time she's had blood on her hands, and what that says for life at the Tower she doesn't know. 

"Maybe I don't want you wandering around with my blood on your hands," he says, stubborn, and she shuts up and scrubs her hands in the cold, cold water of a nearby pond until Alistair is satisfied. 

"So where are these ancient Warden scrolls?" Daveth asks when they all have their vials stowed. 

"South," Alistair answers, gesturing in what is presumably a southerly direction. Marian doesn't know how he can tell, since it's full night now, but she's willing to believe if it'll get them back to Ostagar faster. The Wilds are terrifyingly dark, and while it's mostly quiet, there are still nature sounds when she least expects them. The hairs on the back of her neck are standing at attention, like something is watching them.

They walk in a single-file line with Alistair in the lead and Jory bringing up the rear. The view is stunningly beautiful, actually, and Marian is distantly saddened at the idea of a darkspawn horde swarming over the Wilds and tainting everything they touch. 

For the first time, she entertains the idea that being a Warden might be something to be proud of, rather than a means of escape or something to be escaped from. She has no plans for her life, other than to find her family; she may as well do something worth doing.

The decision calms a part of her that she hadn't realized was upset.

"Darkspawn ahead," Alistair hisses from the front. Marian snatches her staff off her back and shields herself with a quick gesture. She and Jory creep forward to join the other two, and Alistair points out into the deepening gloom to a bridge just at the edge of the light. 

There's a darkspawn on the bridge, even bigger than the one Alistair took down at the last camp, with strange horns on its head. "What is _that_?" she gasps, then clamps a hand over her mouth.

Alistair sends her a warning glance, but answers anyway. "It's a Hurlock Emissary," he says, peering out into the night. "They use magic. That's your target, Marian – leave the rest to us." He gathers Jory and Daveth with a glance, and they nod, following his lead. 

He counts off three beats while Marian feverishly arranges and rearranges her spells into a chain that takes advantage of spell effects and side effects; but that's all the time she has to think before Alistair gets to the end of his count and takes off, the other two following close behind. Marian stomps out the first beat of the cold spell she favors above all else, freezing the Emissary; she sprays it with bolts while the effect lasts, but all too soon it turns and flees to the other side of the bridge, disappearing into the night. 

Marian licks her lips, glancing at the men; they're putting down their targets with efficiency, but they're not done yet. Venturing onto the other side of the bridge, where the emissary obviously felt safe, is a fool's gesture, but she'll never get a better chance to kill it. If she gives the thing time to heal itself...

She picks up her skirts and runs for the bridge before she can change her mind.

Alistair shouts at her, but she blocks his voice from her ears as she runs over the bridge. When she gets to the other side, she tosses a light wisp up into the air, illuminating two large darkspawn with bows, both drawing on her... and her target, the emissary, which has stopped thirty feet away and turned back to confront her with the advantage of numbers. 

She gives thought to her shield, hoping to give it an extra charge, then forgets it and the archers on either side of her. Marian fires a long, thick strand of lightning at the emissary, who counters with a sickly green ball of energy, knocking her back a step. She snarls and fires bolt after bolt, refusing to let up even when the emissary returns each shot with that green energy, though she can feel herself starting to go light-headed. She glances down at herself only to see blood dripping from the points of her elbows and pooling under her feet; there is an arrow lodged in her thigh and one in her shoulder.

 _Huh_ , she thinks. Then she forgets it and pulls on her connection to the Fade, pulls as hard as she can and sends a wave of pure magical energy out of her hands, screaming with the effort. The world fades around the edges, going colorless and pale, but she can hear the others butchering darkspawn all around her. 

She hopes she got the emissary, because she's having a hard time standing up. Marian leans on her staff, planting it in the ground. 

"Marian!" Alistair takes her elbows and helps her stand. 

"There's an arrow here – "

"And here. How did she _do_ that?"

"I don't know. She's lost too much blood."

"I have some potions I nicked off the quartermaster." Someone tips her head back and forces her mouth open; when she tastes the foul muskiness that means medicine, she swallows as much as she can, and after a second she can swallow the rest of it. Her eyes are closed, she realizes, and opens them again. 

"Marian?" Alistair asks, all anxiety. He still has her elbows in his hands. "Can you hear me?"

She nods with an effort. "Another," she whispers. "But take out the arrows first."

They lay her down on the ground and Daveth puts a leather strap between her teeth. "Scream if you want," he says, eyes wide. "We won't tell."

She has no intention of screaming – she knows that promise isn't worth the paper it's printed on – but when Alistair cuts the arrow out of her thigh, the pain is so overwhelming that when she comes back to herself she realizes that she's been screaming quite without her permission. 

"Sorry," Alistair whispers when he moves to her shoulder. "I'm sorry."

Marian shakes her head. The pain is worse when he cuts around the arrowhead in her shoulder; it feels deeper. She is away from herself for longer this time, and she barely notices when Daveth takes the leather out of her mouth. She swallows some healing potion when they pour it down her throat. It doesn't help the lingering pain, but it does mostly close her wounds; she could do the rest if she had any magic left over at all. 

She pushes herself up into a sitting position, and immediately folds over, curling herself around everything that's wrong with her right now; the pain fades gradually, and she unfolds herself to find all three men staring at her. 

"Don't happen to have a lyrium potion, do you?" she asks Daveth with a weary half-smile. She doesn't actually expect an answer, but he digs a hand into his pack and comes out with a very small vial that glows blue in the darkness. He hands it to her silently. "You're a wonder," she says, toasting him with the vial before tossing it down. 

The empty hole in her mind heals itself over with nary a trace and she sighs, relieved. "Maker, that's a weird feeling," she says, and levers herself up with her staff. She casts a healing spell on herself and the last of the wounds disappears without a scar. 

"What were you _thinking_?" Alistair explodes. 

Marian is feeling a little hazy. "What?" 

"There could have been an army of darkspawn here," Alistair says angrily. "You didn't know, because you didn't _check with the Grey Warden_."

"The bards love to sing of a single hero storming the castle," Daveth adds, stooping to casually loot one of the darkspawn wearing clothes. "Of course, normally the hero dies in those."

"And you know better than to draw that deeply on the Fade," Alistair continues, as if Daveth hasn't spoken. "You know what waits for you there."

He's worried as well as angry, Marian realizes, and sighs. "All right," she says. "All right, I get it, I'll be more careful."

"Good," Alistair says, and looks like he's sort of surprised at himself. "We should... we should go," he says, looking around. Her light faded when her magic ran out, and the moon has yet to come up, so all she can see is what's illuminated by the darkspawn torches. Daveth is picking over the bodies and the darkspawn encampment; she knows she should join him if she wants to trade with the quartermaster at Ostagar, but the idea is frankly disgusting. She sighs and finally moves, following Alistair through the camp. They've started moving more east than south; Marian truly hopes that Alistair knows where he's going.

Daveth comes up beside her and slips something into her hand, winks, and joins Alistair in the front. Daveth has stolen the darkspawn torches, which is a thoroughly good idea if they want the entire horde to see them coming, but Alistair takes one anyway. Marian rolls her eyes and finally looks down to see what Daveth gave her: two little lyrium potions and a healing potion. She laughs and puts them in her pockets, healing on the right and lyrium on the left. _Lesson three: thieves are handy_.

They turn north again once they're past the larger lake that divides this region of the Wilds, and soon their path leads up a softly sloping hill. There are more ruins in this area, and Marian thinks they must be close to the old tower, or at least she hopes they are; she is tired and hungry and more than ready to find a bedroll and fall into it.

Naturally, that's when they run into another group of darkspawn, led by something Alistair calls a Hurlock alpha. That makes the tall ones hurlocks, she reasons as she draws her staff, and the short ones... well, she'll have to ask Alistair later. 

They all escape nearly dying this time, and afterward Alistair points out that it was Daveth's turn, and how like a rogue it is to welsh.

Marian rolls her eyes and steps past the men to walk into the ruined tower. It's built on the same scale as Ostagar, with huge, open arches and tall windows overlooking the valley. She tosses up her little light wisp again, but the tower is empty, overgrown, and deserted. 

There's a shattered chest across from the door, and Marian walks over to it, but she already knows that the scrolls are gone. 

"Well, well, what have we here?" a voice says behind her, and Marian spins, her hand already halfway to her staff. The woman standing on the ramp opposite is nothing like anything she's seen before; she's wild and dramatic and baring much more skin than Marian thinks wise in Ferelden's spring chill. "Are you a vulture, I wonder? A scavenger poking amidst a corpse whose bones were long since cleaned?" Marian can feel the magic in her; it burns so bright that she wonders why the others can't feel it, too. The wilder reaches the bottom of the ramp and pauses, assessing them with cool eyes. "Or merely an intruder, come into these darkspawn-filled Wilds of mine in search of easy prey?"

Marian brushes past the men, who still gawk at the wilder like children – it's entirely possible none of them have ever seen that much naked female flesh in their lives, a snide part of her remarks – and stops short when the other woman pins her with her eyes. "What say you, hmm? Scavenger or intruder?"

"Neither," Marian says, narrowing her eyes. "This tower was once the Grey Wardens'." Then she remembers that Alistair is the only legitimate Warden among them; she looks back guiltily, but he bows at the waist, just the smallest fraction, and gestures with his right arm in the courtly gesture for _go ahead_. She smiles, although she's a little startled by his fine manners, and turns back to the witch.

"'Tis a tower no longer. The Wilds have obviously claimed this desiccated corpse." The wilder starts moving again, a purposeful stroll across the tower ruins to the other side. "I have watched your progress for some time. 'Where do they go,' I wondered, 'why are they here?'" She turns, framed by the night at her back. Her eyes are bright with pleasure and curiosity. "And now you disturb ashes none have touched for so long. Why is that?"

"Don't answer that," Alistair warns under his breath, coming to stand beside her. "She looks Chasind, and that means others may be nearby."

She laughs, scornful. "You fear barbarians will swoop down upon you?"

"Yes, swooping is bad," Alistair says with a sneer.

"She's a Witch of the Wilds, she is!" Daveth hisses from Marian's other side. "She'll turn us into toads!"

"Witch of the Wilds?" She snorts. "Such idle fancies, those legends. Have you no minds of your own? You there," she says to Marian. "Women do not frighten like little boys. Tell me your name and I shall tell you mine."

"I'm Marian," she says after an uncertain moment. 

The witch smiles, wickedly amused. "And you may call me Morrigan, if you wish. Shall I guess your purpose? You sought something in that chest, something that is here no longer?"

"'Here no longer?' You stole them, didn't you? You're... some kind of... sneaky... witch-thief!" Alistair sputters indignantly. 

Morrigan raises a delicately plucked eyebrow. "How very eloquent," she says to Alistair, like she's talking to a child. "Tell me, how does one steal from dead men?"

"Quite easily, it seems," Alistair says, indignant and injured, ignoring Marian's hissed warnings to stop. "Those documents are Grey Warden property, and I suggest you return them." 

Morrigan folds her arms and looks down her long nose at Alistair. "I will not, for 'twas not I who removed them. Invoke a name that means nothing here any longer if you wish; I am not threatened."

Marian lays her hand on Alistair's arm, silencing him, before she asks, "Then who _did_ remove them?" She can't believe Alistair can't feel the power rolling off Morrigan in waves, growing hotter and hotter the more he irritates her – they must train templars in how to irritate mages, she thinks, gritting her teeth and digging her fingers into his forearm.

He shakes her hand off, but holds his tongue. _Good enough_.

"'Twas my mother, in fact," Morrigan says.

"Will you take us to her?" Marian asks.

Morrigan laughs. "There is a sensible request. I like you."

"I'd be careful," Alistair says, louder than he has to. Marian winces and turns on him, but he's clearly in no mood to be quieted now. "First it's," and his voice squeaks into a hideous falsetto imitation of Morrigan's voice, "'I like you...' but then 'Zap!' Frog time."

"What is with you and frogs?" Marian mutters. "Shut up, or _I'll_ turn you into one."

"She'll put us all in the pot, she will," Daveth says, fear in his voice.

"If the pot's warmer than this forest, it'll be a nice change," Jory says, and Marian thanks the Maker that his faint heart seems to be absent for the moment. At least one of them has some sense.

It doesn't hurt that he's right, it's colder than a witches' tit and she'd quite like to get back to Ostagar before morning breaks. 

Morrigan's smile tilts lopsidedly, edging into a smirk. "Follow me, then, if it pleases you," she says, turning and disappearing into the night. Marian takes a breath, then another, and follows, the other three behind her.

\---

Marian loses sight of Morrigan every time she takes her eyes off of her, but the ground is so rough that she has no choice but to pick her footing nearly every step of the way. Morrigan makes exasperated sounds when she has to wait for them, and eventually she throws up her own light spell to join Marian's. It helps. 

After what feels like forever but is more likely three-quarters of an hour, Morrigan makes a satisfied noise in her throat and bounds forward like a deer. The loss of her light is annoying, but now Marian can see where she's headed, an old, dilapidated hut surrounded by the ever-present lakes.

An old woman waits for them in the light of a torch planted in the ground. She dresses plainly, in every way an unremarkable old woman... but the Veil is thin here, thinnest where the old woman stands, waiting patiently for them. She's never felt anything like it before. 

"I see them, girl," the old woman says as they stop before her. She looks each of them up and down, lifting her brows a little at Marian's Circle robes, before nodding. "Much as I expected."

She watches the old woman like a small and trembling thing in the presence of a snake, never knowing when she might strike; the others squabble amongst themselves, and she waits.

"And do you believe as these boys do?" Morrigan's mother asks her, watching her in return with eyes the color of old amber, identical to Morrigan's. 

"I don't know what to believe," Marian says, and it is the truth. There are so many questions she wants to ask, but for the first time in her life, she thinks it might be better to keep them behind her teeth. 

The old woman laughs, her eyes knowing. "A statement that possesses more wisdom than it implies. Be always aware... or is it oblivious? I can never remember."

"Do you have the treaties?" Marian asks before she can say anything else. She wants to be as far away from here as possible, away from the wilder witch and her mother, who is so alien that Marian doesn't know what to think.

The old woman smirks and turns, lifting a cloth bag from the ground and handing it to her. Marian touches the side; she can feel the ends of at least two wooden scroll rods. "Thank you for returning them," she says carefully, politely. 

"Such manners!" Morrigan's mother says with a laugh. "Always in the last place you look. Like stockings!" She fixes Marian with her eyes, and says in a more serious tone, "Take them to your Grey Wardens. Tell them this Blight's threat is greater than they realize!"

"What do you mean?" Marian asks, confused.

"Either the threat is more or they realize less. Or perhaps the threat is nothing!" the woman muses. "Or perhaps they realize nothing!" She laughs, a long, drawn-out cackle. "Oh, do not mind me. You have what you came for."

"Time for you to go, then," Morrigan says pointedly.

"Do not be ridiculous, girl. These are your guests." It's an order, with teeth, and from the way Morrigan rolls her eyes, not a very welcome one. Marian is too tired and too glad to get away from such a powerful enigma to care about Morrigan's feelings. 

Morrigan sighs. "Oh, very well. I will show you out of the woods. Follow me."


	9. The Joining

Morrigan leads them to Ostagar's gates and then leaves them, deflecting Marian's thanks with brusque words and disappearing. Marian shrugs and pounds on the gates until the sentry lets them in. He can't tell her what time it is, only that it's third watch, which spans the first half of the night, but he says he expects to be relieved soon. 

Marian looks longingly at the food tent, far in the distance, but turns and trudges over to Duncan's fire with a sigh. 

Duncan stands at his bonfire, staring into its depths. "Here," she says abruptly, holding out the sack of scrolls. She doesn't care if she's interrupting his private meditations; it's late, she's tired and hungry and cranky. 

Duncan turns with an easy smile. "You were successful, then? Good. I've had the Circle mages preparing. With the blood you've retrieved, we can begin the Joining immediately."

This sets her mind buzzing. The Joining is a magical ritual, then? She wishes she knew anything about the magical properties of darkspawn blood; without knowing, she can't guess at its purpose. Rodercom's Uncommon Calling has a section on magnifying rituals, and she has wondered if painting the sigils in blood might magnify the effect. Alistair mentioned that all Wardens can sense the darkspawn when they're nearby – obviously a magically instilled talent. Perhaps the darkspawn blood is used as a focus? _Eshaba,_ in particular, is sensitive to its conducting material, and it's easily linked to a subject, but how do they invert its inherent desire to throw energy outward? 

Marian theorizes happily, cursing her lack of reference materials, until she realizes that the hum of conversation has stopped. She looks up. They're staring at her, and Duncan looks both expectant and gently amused; she realizes that she has just drifted away from a somewhat important conversation, and that perhaps inattention due to the library in her mind might not be as easily explained or excused here as it is at the Tower.

"Sorry," she forces herself to say, hating every moment of it. "Could you repeat the question?"

"Are you ready for the Joining?" Duncan asks, all amusement banished like it's never existed.

"Oh," Marian temporizes, glancing longingly at the army camp she knows is in the distance, where the food and bathing tents are. "You couldn't give us half an hour, could you?" She brightens as she remembers what's in her pack, and that it gives her a legitimate reason for delay. "I have something for the kennel-master."

Something chills deep in Duncan's eyes, and Marian opens her mouth to take back her request, but he surprises her by nodding. "Best you finish anything left outstanding," he says. Alistair's eyes flicker toward Duncan and then away, so quickly Marian almost misses it; but there's a crease between his brows that wasn't there before.

_Trouble's coming_. But without knowing from where, or who, all Marian can do is keep her eyes open.

They break from Duncan's fire and Marian immediately steps over to the kennel. "I brought you something," she says to the kennel-master with a smile, digging in her pack. "I'm pretty sure this is the one you wanted..." She liberates the flower and rolls her eyes when she realizes that it's showered dirt over everything in her pack.

"Let me see that," the kennel-master says, his eyes intent. He gently smooths out a twisted petal, tracing its blood-red base, and smells the center. "That's exactly it," he says with a grin. "Wonderful! Hold on for a minute while I mash it?" He steps away before Marian can point out that it's the middle of the night and she has other things to do.

"Of course I'll wait," she says to empty space.

"Aren't you done yet?" Alistair asks from behind her, and she swallows her breath while simultaneously twisting to look at him and launches into a coughing fit.

"Would you _quit_ that?" Marian asks when she finally has her breath back. "Maker, you're irritating."

"All part of the service," Alistair says blandly, but the gleam in his eye speaks for him. Then he sobers. "But really, we should get moving. Duncan's waiting."

"I know," she says. "But..."

"Thanks for waiting," the kennel-master says, appearing as abruptly as he'd disappeared with a potion pot in his hand. "Mind giving me a hand? I need a Grey Warden for this part."

"I'm not a Grey Warden yet," Marian says, shrinking backward a little. "He is." She jerks her thumb at Alistair.

"Oh no," Alistair says, outright backing away. "Dogs and I don't get along. You do it, if you're so eager. Leave me out of it."

The kennel-master sighs. "I hate to ask, but otherwise I'll have to put him down."

Marian groans and surrenders. "Hold this," she says to Alistair, dumping her pack on him and turning away before he can answer. "What do you need?"

She ends up muzzling a mabari that comes up to her waist while the kennel-master smears flower paste into its wounds. She decides to put something nasty in Alistair's bedroll at the next opportunity. 

"That should do it," the kennel-master says. "I have to say, he's behaved nicely for you. Ever think about trying to imprint a mabari? I think this one'd suit you."

"Um," Marian says, taken aback. She backs out of the stall and accepts her pack from Alistair. "No? I've never had a pet, I'm not sure I could take care of one."

The kennel-master laughs scornfully. "A mabari takes care of itself," he tells her. "Come back after the battle, maybe we can see about imprinting him on you."

She agrees because Alistair is now poking her in the back to move her along. " _Quit_ it!" she hisses as soon as the mabari keeper is out of earshot. "What are you, twelve?"

"Duncan's waiting," is all he says in return, pointing toward the north.

"I was hoping for some food," she tells him, wistful longing spreading through her. 

"Better not," Alistair says, warning. 

"Really?" she says. Some rituals can have that effect, she knows, but even knowing she might be bringing it back up in twenty minutes time doesn't quell the desire. "What about water?"

He silently unhooks his water skin from his pack and passes it over. She's never drunk from a skin before, but after a minute she figures out the mechanics, and takes a swallow, or maybe two, before handing it back. "Thank you," she says, but he doesn't answer. Marian starts walking.

Alistair leads her to the same rotunda she met him in earlier. Jory and Daveth are waiting, and she takes her place in the loose circle they form when Alistair stops. Marian glances around, but there is nothing in this bare place except a low table with a large silver chalice. A ritual compacted into a potion? Could it be done?

Marian carefully banks that thought before she drifts off again. 

She looks up, and Daveth catches her eye. He tosses her a tiny bag, which, when she looks down, proves to be a coin-purse. She looks at Daveth in confusion. 

"The quartermaster was still awake," he says with a shrug. "He pays good coin for some of that stuff from the Wilds, and that's your share." He tosses identical bags to Jory and Alistair, who only catches it after it hits his breastplate. He nods to Daveth and folds his arms; this is a more serious Alistair than she's seen before. It's a little disconcerting.

Jory starts to pace, adding to the tension. Marian wishes he'd just stay still; if she has to with his fidgeting through the whole ritual, she's going to scream. 

Daveth kicks a loose stone at Jory, and he stops. "The more I hear about this Joining, the less I like it," Jory says, and Marian groans. The way he flip-flops between courage and weakness is driving her insane.

"Are you blubbering again?" Daveth says, disgusted.

"Why all these damned tests? Have I not earned my place?" 

"Maybe it's tradition. Maybe they're just trying to annoy you." Marian knows which one she'd rather believe, and from his voice, so does Daveth. 

If she had worlds enough and time, she'd spell his voice silent or his mouth shut. He's giving himself more nerves with his own talking and reminding her of her own, which she had successfully pushed away. Rituals are dangerous, after all, and something about Duncan and Alistair's demeanor is setting off warning signals in her brain. Just did she miss at Duncan's fire?

"Look, there's nothing we can do about it now," she says to Jory. "Unless you want to run, in which case I'm pretty sure Duncan would find you."

Jory sighs. "I only know that my wife is in Highever with a child on the way. If they had warned me... it just doesn't seem fair."

Marian's nerves are multiplying, filling her up until she feels like a glass with too much ice inside. She looks at Alistair, who is studiously ignoring all three of them, his head turned to watch the entrance to the rotunda. 

"Would you have come if they'd warned you? Maybe that's why they don't. The Wardens do what they must, right?"

"Including sacrificing us?" Marian's head comes around so fast her neck hurts. She tries to speak, but her voice has temporarily deserted her.

Daveth shrugs. "I'd sacrifice a lot more if I knew it would end the Blight."

Marian finds her voice. "Shut it, both of you!" She looks at Alistair again, whose shoulders seem to be climbing into his ears. 

"Alistair?" She doesn't know what she wants him to say; she can hear Daveth and Jory continuing their bickering in softer tones, but Alistair won't even look at her. 

She has no idea what's going on. 

" _Duncan_ ," Alistair says in relief, dropping his shoulders and letting his arms unfold. Marian turns to Duncan who pauses, silhouetted in the frame of the empty doorway. He nods to Alistair, who nods back.

He crosses to the low table and turns to stand before it. "At last we come to the Joining," he says. He looks at each of them in turn with serious eyes; the world outside has gone away, the warm people sounds from the army camp, the small animal noises from the Wilds, the wind in the trees and the wet smell of nearing dawn. Jory and Daveth stand with her, scared and unsure. 

"The Grey Wardens were founded during the first Blight, when humanity stood on the verge of annihilation," Duncan says, so solemn. "So it was that the first Grey Wardens drank of darkspawn blood... and mastered their taint."

Marian stares at the chalice with horror and sudden nausea. No wonder Alistair had warned her not to eat anything; she wonders if she'll bring it right back up, and if she'll still be counted a Warden if she does. Maybe they'll decide she's not fit after all, and send her back to the Tower... 

Marian swallows, and swallows again to make sure it sticks. She won't go back, not ever. She'd rather die. If this is what it takes to make that happen, then she'll do it.

That doesn't mean she has to like it, or make too much of an effort not to vomit on Alistair's boots.

"We're... going to drink the blood of those... those _creatures_?" Jory probably thinks he's speaking under his breath, but it echoes in the empty space of the rotunda, bouncing off the stone walls. She winces. 

Duncan nods. "As the first Grey Wardens did before us, as we did before you. _This_ is the source of our power and our victory."

"Those who survive the Joining become immune to the taint," Alistair says, shifting a little in place; Marian can hear his armor creaking. "We can sense it in the darkspawn and use it to slay the archdemon."

Duncan speaks again, his words measured and paced, almost ceremonious. "We speak only a few words prior to the Joining, but these words have been said since the first. Alistair, if you would?"

Marian wonders how many people have heard these words, and for how many they were the last words they'd ever hear.

"Join us, brothers and sisters. Join us in the shadows where we stand, vigilant. Join us as we carry the duty that cannot be forsworn. And should you perish, know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten and that one day..." His voice drops. "We shall join you."

Marian's breath comes slow and shaky. If their aim is to scare them with all this ceremony, then they've succeeded.

Duncan turns and gently picks up the chalice. "Daveth," he says with grave eyes. "Step forward."

Daveth takes the chalice and, hesitating only for a moment, drinks deeply. She can see his throat moving as he swallows and then hands the chalice back to Duncan. He goes a little pale, a green that does not sit well on his complexion, and rocks on his feet. Duncan backs away, watching Daveth as intently as the rest of them.

Abruptly Daveth staggers backward, his breathing coming harsh and jagged in the silence. He screams, holding his head, but even that doesn't break the spell they've been put under, and no one tries to help him. He struggles to lift his head, looking at Duncan, then collapses to his hands and knees. His breathing has stopped, and he holds his throat as if he is choking. 

Only then does Marian go for her staff, but Alistair takes her arm before she can reach it. When she looks at him, he only shakes his head warningly. He's not even looking at her. Reluctantly, she lets her hand drop, and he lets her go.

Daveth falls. Neither Duncan nor Alistair check him, or try to help; that can only mean that there is no help possible, that he's... Marian bites her lip until it bleeds. 

She's never seen anyone die before.

"Maker's breath!" Jory says, horror-struck. 

"I am sorry, Daveth," Duncan says, and the insane thing is that he really does sound deeply sorry. 

The terror is a real thing living inside her now, instead of a part of her; it continues to grow until she's just a vessel for a seething and roiling ocean of fear filling her up.

_Little mage, little mage_... something whispers in her ear. She gasps and then covers her mouth; of all things, she doesn't want them noticing _this_ , not when she's still not sure how much of a templar Alistair really is. _Little mage, do you want to die?_

In the abstract, she can admire its timing. This is the most vulnerable she's ever been. 

_Little mage_ , the demon whispers. _They could not defeat us, not you and me together._

She knows it's true; an abomination with her body would be a fearsome thing. But it wouldn't be her. For all that she's so scared of the Joining she's going to embarrass herself any moment now, at least if she dies, she will be her own self while doing it. 

_I could give you anything_ , it coaxes. _Your family. Your friend. You would never be weak again_.

She closes her mind as firmly as she dares. She will not give in to her fear. _My magic serves what is best in me_.

Duncan sighs, and something in it is bone-deep weariness; she suddenly wonders how many Joinings he has presided over, and how many recruits he has seen fall. A momentary, not entirely welcome wave of empathy sweeps over her, drowning out the demon's sweet murmuring. 

He lifts his head, and offers the chalice to Jory. "Step forward, Jory."

"But..." Jory looks again at Daveth, dead on the ground. "I have a wife. A child!" He takes a step back, and then another; he is close to the wall now, and he draws his sword from its sheath. "Had I known..."

Marian knows exactly what he's feeling, but she would not have chosen to draw on Duncan, whatever the circumstances. Duncan's eyes narrow. 

"There is no turning back," Duncan warns. 

Jory shakes his head, fear alive in his voice. "No! You ask too much!" He brings his sword up defensively. "There is no glory in this!" 

Duncan gently sets the chalice down on the table and draws a little poignard from his belt, barely a handspan long and wickedly sharp. He advances on Jory, implacable, a juggernaut; Jory swings at him with shaking hands. Duncan dodges the first swing, deflects the second, and then he's inside Jory's guard, burying the poignard in Jory's sternum with a flick of the wrist that drives it straight through his scalemail.

Marian has both hands over her mouth. She's not sure what will come out if she drops them, so she doesn't. 

Duncan supports Jory's weight for a long moment, then rips the dagger out of his chest and steps back, allowing him to fall. 

Then Duncan turns to her, a heavy weight in his eyes. "But the Joining is not yet complete." He holds the chalice out to her.

_Little mage_... the demon whispers, urgent now. _Do you want to die?_

_I'd rather die than be like you_ , Marian answers, and takes the chalice. 

The smell of blood and rot hits her first, and she swallows hard to keep from vomiting; then she pinches her nose and drinks down as much as she can bear before she hands it back to Duncan.

The blood leaves a thick, gelatinous coating on her tongue and throat, and she swallows several times to try and get rid of it, but it lingers, tasting of rot and waste and disease. 

_I can still burn it out of you_ , the demon tells her, but she's not listening anymore, preoccupied with the distant changes she can sense in her body. Her blood is heating up, turning to fire in her veins, and there's an overwhelming sharp, stabbing pain in her head. She clutches her head in both hands – it _hurts_ – 

She screams, or she tries to, but she's curiously unconnected to her body; she can hear and see and feel, but she cannot move. 

Something seizes her mind and abruptly rips it away from her body, flinging her into the Fade. Her mind is full of her own screaming, but with a deep breath she decides she can move again. 

Then she looks up. 

And up. And up.

The dragon screams defiance at her, and she just stands there, hands over her ears, too shocked to do anything or even move. It's huge and grossly corrupted, twisted beyond nature, but still she can feel a subtle, languorous song coming from the beast, softly beckoning to her. She sways on her feet, torn between the music calling to a part of her soul she hadn't known existed and the plain and simple fact that approaching any kind of beast that size is suicide.

It screams again, challenging her, but she clenches her teeth and pushes her hands harder against her ears. It doesn't block out the music, which she seems to be hearing through her very skin, but her nails digging into her skin is at least distracting.

She squeezes her eyes tightly shut, and it is only when she notices that she can't feel her fingernails in her scalp anymore that she realizes she has left the Fade. She's lying on the ground; Duncan and Alistair are leaning over her when she opens her eyes, and they both smile. "It is finished," Duncan says. "Welcome."

She sits up, and immediately regrets it; she presses her hands to her head and casts a healing spell, sighing in relief as the magic soothes all her irritated nerves. 

Alistair stands back, giving her room. "Two more deaths. In my Joining, only one of us died, but it was..." He hesitates, and she can only imagine that he's searching for the words to describe the same thing that happened to Daveth. "It was horrible. I'm glad at least one of you made it through."

_So am I_. Marian pushes herself up off the ground and wavers only a little on her feet before finding her balance. It's been a long, hard, bloody day, and suddenly she is _starving_. 

"How do you feel?" Duncan asks, his dark eyes unreadable. 

"Like someone threw me off the Tower," she answers, lifting a hand to touch her head but thinking better of it when her head throbs. "And then landed on me."

"Such is what it takes to be a Grey Warden," Duncan says, but at least he sounds like he understands. It's nice to know that the person who would have murdered her without a second thought knows how she feels. 

Maybe she's a little bitter. 

"It's late," Duncan says. "Alistair will show you where you can sleep; tomorrow morning I'd like you to accompany me to a meeting with the king."

Startled, she agrees without question and regrets it almost immediately, but Alistair is beckoning her from the doorway and she reluctantly follows. "Why does he want me to go to the meeting?" she asks him. They head down the ever-present ramps.

"Now that you're here, you're the low man on the pole," Alistair says, almost with glee. "You're in for some great fun – running messages, taking dictation, and oh! Going to _strategy meetings_ with good King Cailan." The sarcasm in his voice is so thick it practically chokes her. 

"I could really learn to hate you," Marian says.

He laughs and leads her to a tiny tent pitched at the edge of the camp, points out the food and bathing tents, and mercifully leaves her alone. She is so tired that she collapses on the bedroll inside without even taking her hair down, but she can't sleep. She replays Daveth and Jory's deaths over and over in her mind. Could she have stopped it? She's not sure, but she could have at least tried.

She has enormous misgivings about what she's just done, but she can't see any way out of it except forward. She's a Grey Warden now, and there's a Blight to be fought. Fine. Now, if only she had the slightest idea _how_...

Decision made, Marian falls asleep between one breath and the next. She walks the pathways of the Fade alone, and tonight her dreams are her own.


	10. The Tower

Marian wakes on her own for the first time in over a week. For a moment she thinks about reveling in this unexpected treat and going back to sleep, but she's still in her robes, she hasn't bathed since she left the Tower, and she's afraid to think about how she smells right now. 

She sits up and takes down her hair, cursing when her exploring fingers find tangles and grease. She needs a comb. She'll have to go to the quartermaster; she sighs thinking of Daveth, thumbing the Maker's Circle on her chest. 

When she looks up, she realizes that someone has been in her tent while she slept; there's a pile of fabric and metal by the opening. She can just reach it with her toe, so she drags it over to where she sits. When she separates it out, she has two Grey Warden uniforms in her hands, a much lighter version of the full armor Alistair and Duncan had been wearing. There's a _very_ brief blue leather brigandine with sleeves, a long fall of scales and blue leather to cover her vitals, gloves, boots... and a buckled leather shirt and pants set. 

"Oh," Marian says out loud, a catch in her voice. " _Pants_." She hugs them for a second, before she remembers how truly dirty she is, and then she drops them before she can contaminate them. 

She gathers the uniforms, cramming them into her pack as best she can, and leaves her tent. The camp is busier today, with soldiers heading every which way on errands, quick and quiet and expectant. Marian ducks through the gates and goes straight to the quartermaster; he does have a comb, which she seizes with a sigh of relief. He also has soap. 

She cleans him out of potions and commandeers the single extra pack he has left, dumping her finds inside; then she backtracks to find the bathing tents.

When she's finished, clean and dressed and combed, she feels like the perfect picture of a Grey Warden. It's a strange feeling. 

She re-packs her things, fitting most everything in one pack, and shrugs it onto her shoulder as she looks for the cooking tent. When she finds it, it's nearly empty, but the cooks oblige her with a bowl of porridge and dried apples; she is so hungry that she goes back again for whatever they have left, which ends up being dried herring and cheese. 

Finally satiated, Marian gathers her packs and ducks out of the tent into a bright spring morning, hardly more than half gone. The camp spreads out behind her, filling the tall outcropping that Ostagar sits upon; Marian cannot estimate how many are here based on the tents, but there are so many that it makes her feel a little easier about the coming battle.

She can't find Alistair, but the fourth soldier she stops has seen Duncan near the mage's encampment, and she heads that way. She finds him speaking to one of the ubiquitous Chantry sisters that have flooded the keep, and she waits for him to finish.

"Good morning," he says with a smile, turning to her. "I see that Alistair found you a uniform."

"Two, actually," she says, hefting a pack.

"Good," Duncan says. He checks the fit of her boots and gloves, the wear on the buckles, and points out several places she hadn't noticed where the leather stitching is starting to fray. The uniform has clearly had a prior owner, but that doesn't bother her.

Marian can't help what comes out of her mouth next. "Is it truly a coincidence that Alistair is a templar?"

"It is a coincidence," he says, and though there is nothing in his voice to scold her, she can feel herself flushing in shame. "Alistair was the junior Warden before you, and it was his task to lead you through the Joining. That task is now over, and if you wish to have nothing further to do with him, you may do so as long as it does not interfere with your duties or his."

"I don't..." She hesitates. "I don't dislike him," she says finally, and that is the bare truth, if nothing else. "I am wary of templars after the Circle."

"But Alistair is not truly a templar," Duncan says, mild reproof in his tone. He gestures toward the north, clearly meaning for her to precede him, and Marian mutely obeys, though she doesn't know where she's going. He falls into step beside her. "His past is his own, but I will tell you this: he was no more willing to join the Templar Order than you were to join the Circle."

"He mentioned something about that," she admits. "But..."

"You should ask him his opinion of magic sometime," Duncan says. "You might be surprised."

He says nothing else, no matter how she presses him, until they arrive at the grand table the elves had been working on the day before, now covered with close-printed maps and tiny markers. King Cailan and another man lean over the table, arguing so fiercely that they don't notice Duncan and Marian's arrival for whole minutes.

"The darkspawn horde is too dangerous for you to be playing hero on the front lines, Cailan," the dark-haired man says, rough and impatient. 

_Better to leave him in Denerim, then,_ she thinks, recalling the glorified wonder in Cailan's voice. _I don't think you could keep him out of this battle with a pack of mabari and a pair of handcuffs._

They continue to argue; Cailan pulls rank at one point, which dissuades the other man not at all.

Cailan glances over at them. "Duncan, are your men ready for battle?"

Duncan bows a little in greeting. "They are, your Majesty."

Cailan nods, and then his eyes light on Marian. "And this is the recruit I met earlier on the road? I understand congratulations are in order."

Taking her cue from Duncan, she bows. "Thank you, your Majesty," she says, aware that she is mouthing platitudes, but this is not the genial boy she met yesterday on the path, and she doesn't know the other man. Prudence is the order of the day. 

"Every Grey Warden is needed," Cailan says with an assessing glance. "Now, more than ever."

The dark-haired man snorts, disgusted. "Your fascination with glory and legends will be your undoing, Cailan. We must attend to reality." He gestures to the maps and tokens on the table.

"Fine," Cailan sighs. "Speak your strategy, Loghain." He bends back over the table. 

This craggy man is Teyrn Loghain, the Hero of River Dane? He looks like he needs a stiff drink and a nap, not necessarily in that order.

Marian lifts her chin in order to better see what they're talking about; after a minute, she gathers that their plan is to split the army in rough halves and use one half as bait, sucking the darkspawn into a prepared position in the valley under the bridge while the other half hammers them from the rear. The mages are positioned on either side of the pass on the slope of the hills to give them sight-lines, and archers and mabari are stationed with the main mass, along with the Grey Wardens.

Each type of unit has a different little flag on the table - there's even a little carved dog for the mabaris, Marian notices and rolls her eyes. _Boys and their toys..._ But it's rather impressive, all the same. She's never seen anything like this, not in all her books, and she cranes her neck to catch some of the smaller details; Duncan glances at her with an amused smile she notices out of the corner of her eye, and she drops back onto her heels, chagrined. 

She's always been more curious than the people around her, which the other apprentices called brown-nosing. She calls it taking an interest in life, or staying alive for short.

"Who shall light this beacon?" the king asks, standing away from the table. He rotates his shoulders as if to get rid of stiffness.

"I have a few men stationed there," Loghain answers. "It's not a dangerous task, but it is vital." 

"Then we should send our best," Cailan says. He glances over at Duncan and Marian, considering, and then nods. "Send Alistair and the new Grey Warden to make sure it's done."

"Your fascination with legends will be your undoing," Loghain says, turning away from the table in disgust. 

"I'm happy to help, your majesty," Marian says, keeping a careful eye on the teyrn's back. "But surely Alistair is more useful on the field."

"Your enthusiasm is appreciated," Cailan says with a smile. "No, it's best that you both go."

Loghain snorts. "You rely on these Grey Wardens too much. Is that truly wise?"

"Enough of your conspiracy theories, Loghain," Cailan says. "Grey Wardens battle the Blight, no matter where they're from." Marian glances involuntarily at Duncan standing beside her, noticing again the tone to his skin that says he is from somewhere much warmer than Ferelden.

Loghain declares the meeting over and strides off. Marian hopes that he has a bottle of something potent in his tent; it looks like he needs it.

"Alistair should be waiting at my fire," Duncan says, leading her back down the ramps. "I would rather brief you both at once."

She accepts that, but she has so many questions that they are filling up her mind, bursting to get out. Duncan takes one look at her face and sighs. "What do you wish to know?"

"Everything," Marian says with a laugh. "You'll regret ever asking that question, you know."

"Then perhaps it could wait until after the battle?" Duncan suggests.

Marian bites her lip, but there's one thing she really wants to know the answer to now, while Duncan cannot conveniently _forget_ how Loghain bristles at the very idea that Wardens could supplant his soldiers. "Why does Teyrn Loghain hate the Wardens so?"

Duncan pauses mid-step. She looks up and catches his face before he fully turns to her; he is not in this place or time, but somewhere far away, somewhere troubling. 

"You could have picked a more awkward question," Duncan says, forcing a smile. "But it would have been difficult." He tilts his head – Marian is beginning to recognize this as something Duncan does while he's thinking, and waits patiently for him to get his words in order.

"Teyrn Loghain has heard the stories of the Grey Wardens," he begins carefully. "Stories of our prowess in battle, of our ability to sense the location of darkspawn. He has observed us on the field of battle, and I'm afraid he has found us wanting."

Marian frowns; she's never seen Duncan fight, not in a real battle, but she has no doubt about his lethality, and if Alistair is the example of the rest of the Wardens, they must be a potent fighting force.

Duncan smiles at the look on her face. "We hold our own on the battlefield," he admits. "But any legend may fall far short of the reality, as he himself could attest." 

Marian opens her mouth to protest, but shuts it again, feeling conflicted. She's heard just as many tales of River Dane as she has of the Wardens, and they were considerably more patriotic, but the man she met just looks tired. Her books all say... 

But that's her problem, isn't it? This is the real world, and not everything is as cut-and-dried as it is in her books. 

Duncan takes her elbow and steers her gently toward his fire. "What are you going to do about it?" Marian asks.

"What we must," he says, glancing down at her. "Remember that: Grey Wardens always do what they must. Whatever it takes to destroy the darkspawn. Loghain is not the only one with doubts, but one man's opinion makes no difference – no matter who that man may be." He releases her elbow when they reach the edge of his campsite, and the chance to speak privately is lost. She has so many questions – she always does, but she stamps them down with the ease of long practice.

"Marian knows this already," Duncan says to Alistair, waiting patiently by the fire. "You and she will go to the Tower of Ishal and ensure the beacon is lit when we signal you from the field."

Alistair frowns. "What? I won't be in the battle?"

"It is the king's personal request," Duncan says gently. "If the beacon is not lit, Teyrn Loghain's men won't know when to charge."

"So he needs _two_ Grey Wardens standing up there holding the torch," Alistair says in disbelief. "Just in case, right?"

"Even if it does need a Grey Warden, we don't both need to go," Marian argues again. Duncan has influence with Cailan, that much she can see for herself. If he would at least condone letting Alistair join the rest of the Wardens... "The king needs every soldier. Alistair should fight with the rest of you." 

Sidelining Alistair is truly a waste of a good fighter, but she also needs to get away from him. She likes him, she supposes, but... Her lingering fear of him is quite irrational and she knows it. That doesn't make it go away. 

Alistair turns to look at her, but she carefully keeps her eyes on Duncan. After a moment he looks away again. 

Duncan raises his eyebrow at her, and she keeps her face blank and gormless. He shakes his head. "If King Cailan wishes Grey Wardens to ensure the beacon is lit, then Grey Wardens will be there." There is no arguing with him this time. The juxtaposition between the Warden-Commander and the gentle man who showed her how to curry horses is fascinating when it's not terrifying. "We must do whatever it takes to destroy the darkspawn... whether it's exciting or not."

Alistair is apparently a braver man than she is, because he says, "I get it, I get it. Just so you know, if the king ever asks me to put on a dress and dance the Remigold, I'm drawing the line."

"Why would he ever do that?" Marian asks, both unwillingly fascinated and not entirely sure she wants to know.

"I happen to be quite fetching in a dress," he says, glancing at her. 

She bites her lip, not daring to say a single thing for fear of laughing. From the look on Duncan's face, if she does he will break something, which might include their heads. 

"The Tower of Ishal," Duncan says, with exaggerated patience, "lies on the other side of the gorge. Marian, we passed the entrance on the way in." She nods, sobering. "We will signal you when the time is right. Alistair will know what to look for."

Marian steals a look at Alistair; he doesn't look like this is a surprise to him. At least _somebody_ knows what they're doing. "I'm ready," she says.

"As am I," Alistair says.

"Then I must join the others. From here, you two are on your own." Duncan looks at each of them, his dark eyes grave. "Remember, you are both Grey Wardens. I expect you to be worthy of that title."

Marian nods. She intends to be.

"Duncan..." Alistair says, his voice dropping. "May the Maker watch over you."

"May He watch over us all," Duncan agrees.

On the heels of his words, a giant, startling _boom_ echoes over the fortress. "What was _that_?" Marian gasps, rubbing one ear. 

Duncan and Alistair exchange glances that Marian can't read. "Artillery," Alistair says. 

Duncan nods to each of them and slips away. Marian shakes her head in confusion. "I thought the darkspawn were mindless," she says. "How did they build artillery?"

"Come on," he says, heading toward the bridge. Something tiny pings off of Alistair's armor, and then another; Marian looks up only to see grey, looming clouds have taken over the sky, and it is beginning to rain. She groans.

She follows Alistair to the shelter of the ruined tower at the near end of the bridge. "The darkspawn _are_ mindless," he says, pressing close to her so she can hear him over the noise. "The archdemon isn't."

That is a horrible thought she is happy not to examine too closely right now.

Something explodes on the other side – she hopes against hope that the tower in flames is not their destination, but finds that unlikely. 

"We have to get to the Tower!" Alistair says, speaking louder now over the rain and the melee. There's a flood of soldiers pressing against their backs, slipping around them to take up positions on the bridge. Some are already dead; she can see bodies at the other end, proof of the artillery's accuracy. She presses against Alistair; after a moment he takes her meaning, and they push their way to the edge of the bridge. 

There's nothing to do but run for it; even if they do see a projectile coming, there's nowhere to hide, and no time to get there. They make it to the other side with only one near miss, and only then does Marian unfold from the half-crouch she'd been running in. Her back twinges.

"Come on!" Alistair shouts, still running. She swears and takes off after him, her staff bumping into her back with every step she takes. At least she _can_ run – she says a paean of thanksgiving for blessed, blessed _pants_ – 

Alistair skids to a halt in front of an obviously panicked soldier, one of a pair standing at the end of one of the ubiquitous ramps. "You... you're Grey Wardens, aren't you?! The tower... it's been taken!" 

Once they calm the soldier down, he tells them that the darkspawn have flooded the tower all the way to the top, spilling out of the doors as they speak, and he has only just managed to get away with his partner. Alistair and Marian exchange grim looks.

"We have to go in," Marian says, running the pads of her fingers over the potions at her belt in a quick count. "We don't have a choice. But the men on the bridge could use some reinforcement."

The soldier glances at his partner, then shakes his head. "Begging your pardon, miss – " He grimaces. "Excuse me, Warden – but I'm thinking you'll need all the help you can get." He unlimbers his shield and a large mace and turns to head back into the tower courtyard. His partner pulls out a crossbow and follows.

Marian raises an eyebrow at Alistair, who only shrugs before drawing his sword and shield and following. She takes a deep breath and follows suit.

She had been prepared to find fewer darkspawn than the soldiers reported, but if anything there were more. There are small packs surrounding one or two soldiers each scattered around the yard; most times the soldiers are dead before she and her team can rescue them, but they save one or two and she sends them back to the bridge or the hospital tents, whichever is appropriate. They take down another Alpha just before the doors, and after that grueling fight Marian is forced to ask for a small pause to recuperate. Alistair acquiesces without argument, but he watches her narrowly until her breathing steadies. It does nothing for her nerves.

The moment she feels less like a jelly inside, she stands and they walk into the Tower.

The interior is jarringly familiar; parts of Kinloch Tower look like this, a great circular room surrounded by smaller rooms on the outside walls. It's never been infested by darkspawn, though. That's a new twist.

They drive through into the great room, where Marian has her first experience with traps. After she picks herself up off the floor, and checks that all her teeth are where they belong, and makes sure that nobody is actually on fire, and pushes through the slick grease spell blocking the entrance, she is _angry_. She fries the archers while the men take on a magic user and then stalks on through the small rooms, killing darkspawn right and left, until she finds a staircase leading up to the next floor.

"Anyone know how many floors there are?" she tosses over her shoulder while striding up the stairs.

The men have been trailing her at a very respectful distance; she can practically hear them exchanging glances. The crossbowman loses the silent war not to attract her attention. "Four, I think, Warden," he says.

Alistair follows her up the stairs to cover her as she opens the door, but the first room is empty. "What are these darkspawn doing ahead of the rest of the horde?" he asks. 

"They're the answer to your prayers," she says, keeping a wary eye out. "You _were_ the one complaining about missing all the fighting, weren't you?"

Alistair laughs. "I do seem to recall something like that... I guess there is a silver lining here, if you think about it."

Marian can't help laughing as the last of her pique drains away. "Well?" she asks, cocking an eyebrow at him. "Would you prefer to lead, oh fearless warrior?"

"Better me than a squishy mage," he says with a grin, bringing his shield up as he slips in front of her. "We have to hurry," he reminds her, suddenly sober. "Teyrn Loghain is waiting for the signal."

"I know," she replies and takes one deep breath to settle herself. "Go."

They sweep the second floor, meeting only one sticky spot that they clear with some interestingly placed ballistae; the third floor has a similar knot of darkspawn tormenting four caged mabari, and when she lets them out of their cages, they rip the darkspawn apart with very little help from the Wardens.

She's letting Alistair precede her now that she's got her temper back; she's not ready for what she sees over his shoulder when he opens the door to the fourth floor. It's one large, round chamber, like the Harrowing chamber, and on the opposite side is the biggest creature she's ever seen, a darkspawn of grossly exaggerated proportions with giant, razor-sharp horns. 

Marian inhales, a silent gasp, and grabs Alistair's arm. "What is _that_ ," she hisses in his ear, but even her lowest voice is too loud in the bare room.

It turns. It sees them, and it roars, spraying spittle in every direction, and Marian's grip on Alistair's arm tightens. 

"Ogre," Alistair says shortly. He steps into the room, forcing Marian to let go or attach herself to him like a limpet; she lets go, to save her dignity, and slowly follows him in. 

_Ogre_... She flips through the books in her mind, trying desperately to remember anything about them; weaknesses would be preferred, but anything would help. Unfortunately, she's not coming up with anything, and perhaps it's the terror fogging her mind, but she's not surprised. She's not been prepared for anything she's been through since she left the Circle; why should this be any different?

The crossbowman hangs back with her while Alistair and the other man – and how horrible is it that she hasn't even asked them their names? she thinks in a moment of madness – drive forward as the ogre comes pounding across the room. It swings one massive hand and sends Alistair flying and while she is wishing furiously for more hands or more soldiers or a blasted ballista, she spares one quick look to make sure Alistair is breathing. Then there is nothing but the fight, and pulling magic as hard and as fast as she can; sometimes her winter spell catches the ogre just right and it freezes in place, giving them a few seconds of breathing room. Otherwise there's only causing as much damage as quickly as they can manage, a task which goes much easier when Alistair levers himself back onto his feet, groaning. She breaks her stream of damaging spells to heal him as quickly as she can and then it's back to flame, lightning, and arcane bolts.

The ogre catches the soldier with the mace in his giant fist; ignoring the rest of them for the moment, it examines the man with tiny, beaded eyes. Then it sneers and rips the soldier's head clean off with its other hand. It drops the pieces on the floor and turns back to Alistair. 

Marian cannot look away from the man in pieces on the floor. She is so fresh from her Joining that she can still taste the foulness on her tongue, and Jory and Daveth died horrible deaths in front of her eyes, but what has happened to the soldier is much worse than that, than even the monster in the room with her. 

Her hand tightens on her staff. If they don't kill the ogre, the same thing will happen to the rest of them, and the men on the battlefield below will all die. Everything is depending on them. She tears her gaze from the doomed soldier with sheer will and looks up.

She is just in time to catch Alistair leaping through the air and planting his sword six inches into the ogre's face. He rips it free with a snarl and the ogre screams, a desperate sound in the dead air, and Alistair drives his sword in again and again until the ogre goes limp and begins to fall backward. Alistair rides out the ogre's crash-landing and disengages when it's prone, leaping backward off the ogre with a curiously cat-like movement. 

Marian's jaw drops. If she hadn't just seen it, she would never have believed it. 

Alistair bends right over at the waist, panting, with his hands on his knees. After a long moment, he looks sideways at her. "The _beacon_ ," he says urgently. "We've surely missed the signal – "

Marian shakes her head, trying to clear her mind. Too much has happened in too short of a period and her brain is foggy. "The beacon," she repeats. "Of course."

It's easily done, at least by a mage; there's an ordinary fireplace across from the door, wood already laid. She spins flame from her hands, and the kindling goes up immediately. 

Alistair straightens up, heaving a long sigh. "Well, all's well that ends not catastrophically," he says, wincing. His eyes land on the headless soldier on the floor, and he sighs again. "Poor sod," he says softly. "Maker take him."

Marian looks over at the crossbowman, for the first time noticing his white beard and tired eyes. He smiles at her a little, and she tries to smile back, but it doesn't feel like she succeeded, and it feels wrong anyhow. Her eyes go back to the man on the floor, and then she turns her head so she doesn't have to look at him anymore. 

She wonders how they'll know when the battle is over, and what they should do while they wait. It's just possible that they might be able to do something from – 

The door slams against the wall behind her and she spins, her hand clenching on her staff; the crossbowman brings up his bow, but it is too late. A darkspawn arrow takes him in the eye, and she feels the impact of two more slam into her shoulder and ribcage. She cries out in pain; she can just see a blur of movement out of the corner of her eye that she knows is Alistair, but then he swears – 

She cannot stay on her feet. She is light-headed, and something is wrong with her eyes – Another arrow slams into her stomach, and she does not cry out so much as she loses all her breath to the impact. She clings to her staff as she sinks to her knees. There is something wrong with her eyes...

The world goes away.


	11. The Witches

She wakes from a deep, drugging sleep that threatens to pull her back under – in fact, she vaguely remembers waking before and succumbing to the demands of her body, but she's determined not to fall back asleep this time. If nothing else, she has to find a necessary.

There's none of that staple in storybooks of not knowing where she is or what happened. She remembers the ogre, and the fusillade of darkspawn arrows, but she's alive and she smells no darkspawn here. Someone is standing near her. 

She opens her eyes.

"Ah," the person says, revealing itself as a woman. "Your eyes finally open. Mother _shall_ be pleased."

The wilder girl from the day before is standing next to her, smiling down at Marian as if she's just performed a trick on command. Beyond her, there are walls, a fireplace, a few pieces of furniture... she's in a house, she realizes.

She wonders if she's fit for sitting up – she doesn't feel any pain lying at rest, but she knows how swiftly that can change, that tearing pain can accompany the smallest movement if she's not yet healed enough. She twitches herself all over with no pain and calls that good enough, sitting up with only a truly atrocious ache in her shoulder and hip making itself known. 

"What happened?" Marian asks. She realizes that she's entirely naked underneath a thin, scratchy blanket and wonders where her clothes are.

"You were injured," Morrigan replies, a more clinical look entering her eyes. "Mother rescued you. Do you not remember?"

"I remember the darkspawn," Marian says slowly; the stench and the terror are still with her. Another thought springs from that one. "Alistair!" she gasps. "Is he – "

"The suspicious, dim-witted one who was with you before, that is Alistair?" Morrigan asks, arching her brows. "Yes, Mother managed to save both of you, though 'twas a close call."

"And the battle?" Marian spots her clothes and packs in a pile on a chest lying at the end of the bed. She slides further down the bed and stretches to reach for her smallclothes, which irritates her shoulder. She winces.

"Allow me," Morrigan says, dropping her smalls into her lap. "But first I must change your bandages." 

Marian has no body modesty, thanks to the dormitories, but it's quite unnerving to stretch out naked and let Morrigan change her bandages. She can feel Morrigan's eyes on her – not sexually, but in a cold, assessing way that brings up the small hairs on the back of her neck.

"There, 'tis done," Morrigan says finally, standing.

"Thank you for healing me," Marian says carefully. It does not do to get on the wrong side of a mage, especially when you're as weak as a kitten and she seems as likely to eat you as look at you.

"I – " Morrigan pauses, sounding almost human for a moment. "You are welcome, though Mother did most of the work. I am no healer."

Marian returns to the question Morrigan neatly avoided. "The battle?"

"The man who was to respond to your signal quit the field," Morrigan says, her eyes softer with an empathy that seems ill-suited. "The darkspawn won your battle."

" _What_?" She can't believe it – _quit the field_? Teyrn Loghain, the Hero of River Dane?

Then she remembers how long they'd taken to light the beacon. What if – 

_That's absurd_ , she tells herself, shaking off the idea. But it lingers...

"Those he abandoned were massacred to the last man," Morrigan continues. Marian concentrates on pulling her pants over her hips, but her mind reminds her of who she's talking about: the king, Duncan, all the Grey Wardens she had yet to meet, even the kennel-master who loved his mabari so well. All dead. "Your friend... he is not taking it well."

"I can't see a single reason why he should," Marian snaps, stomping her foot into her second boot. "Every Grey Warden in Ferelden was down there." 

"And so would you have been, if not for Mother," Morrigan says, reminding Marian of exactly what she owes them. Not that she's likely to forget.

"Then I should thank your mother as well," Marian says, settling the tabard over her head. "Where is she?"

"Outside, with your friend." Morrigan tilts her head, regarding Marian calmly. "She wished to see you when you awoke."

She's not half done dressing, but the important parts are covered and she has no wish to keep the old witch waiting. "I should go, then," she says, standing. She feels steady enough on her feet, thank the Maker, and but for the lingering ache in shoulder and hip she would never have known there was anything wrong with her. "Thank you again," Marian adds.

Morrigan nods. "I will stay, and make something to eat."

Marian shoves the rest of her kit into her packs and slings them over her shoulder before pushing the door open.

"See?" Morrigan's mother says, and she looks over; Morrigan's mother stands with Alistair by the lake, talking to him in soothing tones. "Here is your fellow Grey Warden. You worry too much, young man."

Alistair turns and his reddened eyes say everything she needs to know about how he's feeling. 

"You," he says. His voice is choked with tears and he swallows. "You're alive! I thought you were dead for sure."

Marian spreads her hands so he can get a good look. "No, Morrigan's mother does good work." She smiles at the old woman in heart-felt thanks, and she nods in return. 

"Duncan's dead," Alistair says. Marian closes her eyes, remembering the man who saved her in the Tower, who showed her how to curry a horse and grieved the death of his recruit. That is the Duncan she wants to remember. Alistair is still in shock; she can hear it in his voice, the stunned incomprehension that says he does not want to believe what he knows to be true. "They're all dead. If it weren't for Morrigan's mother, we'd be dead, too."

She doesn't know how to comfort him, or even if he'd let her. 

Morrigan's mother snorts. "Do not talk about me as if I am not present, lad."

"I didn't mean..." Alistair trails off, at a loss. "But what do we call you? You never told us your name." 

"Names are pretty, but useless. The Chasind folk call me Flemeth. I suppose it will do." And then Flemeth smiles. _I know what you're thinking_ , that smile says, _I know the stories and the tales. Who knows which ones are true and which ones aren't?_

_I do._

After a moment, Marian asks, "You're Flemeth?"

" _The_ Flemeth from the legends?" Alistair adds. "Daveth – "

"Alistair?" Marian cuts him off mid-sentence. "Perhaps that isn't so important right now." He looks at her, confused and still subdued with grief, and she hopes that he understands her message, about ancient witches and powers and about frogs. 

"You _are_ brighter than you look," Flemeth says with a sly smile. "I did wonder."

Marian smiles back, determined to get out of this place with wits and skin and companion intact. "I wanted to thank you for healing me," she says as humble as she can manage. "I remember I was badly hurt."

Flemeth waves her hand, dismissive. "Think nothing of it! We cannot have all the Grey Wardens dying at once, can we?"

"That would be a bad idea at the moment," Marian agrees. "We are Grey Wardens, and this is a Blight..." ... _except Duncan never got around to telling me what Grey Wardens actually do_ , Marian thinks bitterly. She devoutly hopes Alistair knows more than he's let on so far.

"And it is your duty to unite the lands against the Blight," Flemeth finishes for her, watching them both with stern eyes. They must look a little bit like drowned puppies, Marian realizes; Alistair is what her mother would have charitably called 'out of sorts', and she feels like an ogre's chewtoy. She sighs and begins collecting her loose hair in her hands. Alistair watches her moving hands, but he's not seeing her, not really. She can feel loose sticks and dirt in the curls of her hair and she's disgusted by herself, but she binds it up in a mass and forces herself to forget about it. Baths will have to wait.

"We'll have to do something," Marian says. "But I haven't the faintest idea what."

"We were already fighting the darkspawn!" Alistair exclaims. "Why would Loghain _do_ this?"

"Now _that_ is a good question," Flemeth says, for once serious. "Men's hearts hold shadows darker than any tainted creature."

Marian remembers yesterday's conversation with Duncan about Loghain's doubts. Could that be the reason for the night's slaughter?

"Perhaps he believes the Blight is an army he can outmaneuver." Marian looks up again to find Flemeth watching her, eyes sharp and knowing. "Perhaps he does not see that the evil behind it is the true threat."

"The archdemon," Alistair says grimly.

"How do we find it?" Marian asks. "And once we've found it, how do we kill it?"

"We'll find it by going through the entire horde," Alistair says darkly. "And no Gray Warden has ever done that without the armies of a half-dozen nations at his back. Not to mention..." He deflates. "I don't know _how_."

Flemeth cocks one steely eyebrow. "How to kill the archdemon, or how to raise an army? It seems to me those are two different questions, hmm? Have the Wardens no allies these days?"

"I... I don't _know_." Alistair sighs. "Duncan said that the Grey Wardens of Orlais had been called. And Arl Eamon would never stand for this, surely." He straightens when he mentions Eamon, speaks more quickly and lifts his chin. 

"You mean Eamon Guerrin, Arl of Redcliffe?" Marian asks.

"Yes," Alistair says thoughtfully. "He wasn't at Ostagar; he still has all his men. And he was Cailan's uncle. I know him. He's a good man, respected in the Landsmeet." He brightens. "Of course! We could go to Redcliffe and appeal to him for help!"

"Alistair, what happened to the treaties we found for Duncan?" Marian asks.

"Ah," Flemeth says, smiling. "There is a smart lass."

"Of course," Alistair exclaims. "The treaties! Grey Wardens can demand aid, they're obligated to help us during a Blight!"

"I may be old, but this is beginning to sound like an army to me," Flemeth says, folding her arms. 

"So can we do this?" Alistair asks, excitement dwindling into uncertainty. "Go to Redcliffe and these other places and... build an army?"

"I don't know about you, but I'm not going to hang around and let those things destroy Ferelden," Marian says; she cannot help but picture her family caught in the path of the Blight. Her heart aches. "I'll do whatever it takes."

She can hear Duncan, speaking from yesterday: _Grey Wardens do what they must. Remember that_.

"Ah," Flemeth says with a smile, unfolding her arms. "So you are set, then? Ready to be Grey Wardens?"

"I am," Marian says, her eyes on Alistair. He looks up and meets her eyes, holding her gaze for only a moment before he looks away, but in that moment she sees the depths of his grief and his anger, and she knows that he is with her. "We are," she corrects herself. "Thank you, Flemeth. I don't know how we can repay you, but – "

Flemeth holds up her hand, interrupting Marian. "No, no," she says. "Thank _you_. You are the Grey Wardens here, not I." She smiles again. "And before you go, there is yet one more thing I can offer you..."

Marian waits, but that seems to be the end of the conversation, despite Flemeth's words; Flemeth turns to watch the sun tracking gently across the sky. Marian exchanges a puzzled glance with Alistair, but for lack of anything better to do she retreats to Alistair's side and puts on her belt and gloves.

She runs a weather eye over Alistair, who is slouching again and staring out over the small lake lining Flemeth's hut. He looks uninjured, and she finds it not out of the realm of imagination that he heals faster than she does, so she puts her concerns for him aside and draws her staff, occupying herself with a minute examination of its grain for possible new cracks and flaws that will affect her spells.

Soon Morrigan strides out of the hut, a practiced curve to her lips. "The stew is bubbling, Mother dear. Shall we have two guests for the eve... or none?"

"The Grey Wardens are leaving shortly, girl," Flemeth says, studying her. 

"Such a shame..." Morrigan murmurs.

"And you will be joining them."

" _What?_ " Frankly, Marian likes Morrigan the better for the undignified yelp that word comes out as, but she's feeling some of the same dismayed shock and is in no mood for laughing. 

Flemeth cackles. "You heard me, girl. The last time I looked, you had ears!" 

"Um," Marian says intelligently, then rallies. "Thank you for the offer, but if Morrigan doesn't wish to join us..."

"Her magic will be useful," Flemeth remarks, and Marian instantly thinks of fifty questions she wants answers to immediately. She can feel them written on her face, and without looking she knows that Flemeth is smirking. It's in her voice. "Even better, she knows the Wilds and how to get past the horde."

"It's up to you, Morrigan," Marian says weakly. _Damn_ her stupid face – 

"Mother... this is not how I wanted this," Morrigan protests. "I am not even ready – "

Alistair leans into her, speaking low into Marian's ear while Flemeth speaks seriously to her daughter. "Won't this add to our problems? Out of the Wilds, she's an apostate," he points out. 

"If we don't stop this, soon they'll have much more to worry about than one apostate," Marian points out, trying to listen to the other conversation as well as Alistair. It will give her the most terrific headache later, but it's usually possible...

"You must be ready. Alone, these two must unite – " 

Alistair speaks again, unexpectedly, and she loses the thread of the other conversation. "Point taken," he says, grudging. "But you're telling her she sticks out like a sore thumb." She makes a face at him, and thankfully he quiets.

" – out you, they will surely fail, and all will perish under the Blight. Even I." Marian swiftly reconnects the sentences and is satisfied that she hasn't missed anything.

"I... understand," Morrigan says, defeated. 

"And you," Flemeth says, looking at Marian and Alistair. "Do you understand? I give you that which I value above all in this world. I do this because you _must_ succeed."

"Yes," Marian agrees. Beside her, Alistair nods. 

Morrigan glances at Marian, then at Alistair, and heaves a long-suffering sigh. "Allow me to get my things, if you please," she says, grudging every word.

She disappears into the hut before they can say anything one way or the other, returning quickly with packs strapped to her back. 

_Perhaps she just doesn't have much_ , Marian thinks dubiously, running an eye over the packs. _Is that a distillation flask? Maybe she packs quickly..._

Morrigan hesitates and then comes to a stop before Marian. "I am at your disposal, Grey Wardens. I suggest a village north of the Wilds as our first destination. 'Tis not far and you will find much you need there." She smiles, and this one she must have learned from Flemeth; it has the same sharp edges and deliberate alien nature. "Or, if you prefer, I shall simply be your silent guide. The choice is yours."

Marian raises an eyebrow. "That sounds like a fate worse than death."

Flemeth cackles. "You will regret saying that!"

"Dear, sweet mother," Morrigan says, poison in every word. "You are so kind to cast me out like this. How fondly I shall remember this moment."

"Well, I always said if you want something done, do it yourself, or hear about it for a decade or two afterwards." 

Alistair frowns. "Do you really want to take her along because her mother says so?"

"Do you have a better idea?" Marian asks. "We need all the help we can get."

"I guess you're right," Alistair says, reconsidering the idea. "The Grey Wardens have always taken allies where they could find them."

"I am so pleased to have your approval," Morrigan says acidly.

Marian groans. "Can we just go?"

They can, as it turns out; there are no more surprise additions to their party and Morrigan directs them to the north. 

As soon as they leave, Alistair lapses into silence, only broken if she asks him a direct question; there's very little she needs to ask him at the moment, and she doesn't want to prod him while he's so clearly upset. She leaves him alone. Unfortunately, Morrigan is relentlessly bored by the scenery and the walking and the lack of darkspawn and prods him with inane questions until he snaps at her.

After that, Marian walks between them. 

She turns the tables on Morrigan, asking her so many questions about her magic and her mother and what spells she knows and even the distillation equipment that hangs from her pack that Morrigan falls into an irritated silence. They walk that way until nightfall, where Morrigan leads them to a hollow between two hills, then stalks off to hunt for dinner.

Marian surveys their equipment with dismay. Their unplanned departure from Ostagar played merry games with their supplies – between her and Alistair, they have one bedroll, a pillow made from stuffing her shifts inside each other, and a tiny pot she normally uses for tea. Luckily for their dinners, Morrigan is better prepared, but they're going to be stretched thin between here and the village.

She's prepared to fight for first watch, but Alistair gives in without a fight, lying down on the bedroll and staring at the small fire she built while waiting for Morrigan to return. Morrigan takes second watch, and Marian curls up on a slightly softer patch of dirt near the fire. She hasn't slept on the ground in years, but she's so tired that she drops right off.

Alistair shakes her awake and they get back on the road; the second day goes the same as the first, saving a quick encounter with three darkspawn. Alistair takes first watch that night, and Marian takes second. 

When Marian sleeps, she looks for ways to get a good vantage point on the Black City. It's something to do at nights, and she's always been curious, so why not? She would never go in, of course, she's not stupid, but what harm could looking do?

Tonight she's building wings, painstakingly forming them from pieces of the ground. She looks down to dig up another chunk, and when she looks back up, her piece of the Fade is gone.

 _She is the dragon. She is the horde, and the song, and the ceaseless, maddening yearning; she is the defiant flame, and she is the directive. She challenges the silent watcher, screaming for the sky that has always been denied her, and she is the watcher and the challenge; she is not the sky, but the sky will be hers, the sky and the earth and the water and above all she will be_ free _–  
_  
When the dream releases her Marian rolls over and vomits. "Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter," she whispers shakily when she can speak again. "Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow – Blessed are they... _Maker_ – " Her thumb traces endless circles on her chest as she prays. She cannot get the taste out of her mouth, because it's not in her mouth but in her mind. 

"Marian?" Alistair kneels beside her, reaching out for her shoulder, but he thinks better of it and lets his hand drop. "Bad dreams, huh."

She sits back on her heels. "Maker, you can say that again," she says with a shaky laugh. "It felt – I don't know, it felt real for a minute there."

Alistair grimaces. "Well, it is real. Sort of." 

"What?" Marian demands.

"You see, part of being a Grey Warden is being able to hear the darkspawn. That's what your dream was: hearing them. The archdemon, it talks to the horde, for lack of a better word, and we feel it just as they do. That's why we know this is really a Blight." 

"The dragon?" Marian asks. "That was the archdemon?"

Alistair nods. "I don't know if it's really a dragon, but it sure looks like one. But yes, that's the archdemon."

"I saw it after my Joining," Marian says, looking away. "It was calling..."

"Yeah," Alistair says with a grimace. "I had that one too. It takes a bit, but eventually you can block the dreams out. Some of the older Grey Wardens say they can understand the archdemon a bit, but I sure can't."

"I'll be pestering you for advice, then," Marian says lightly, hoping she doesn't sound as scared as she feels. She doesn't dare ask Alistair what his archdemon dreams are like – what if hers are different? She _was_ the archdemon, and the horde, and the taint...

"You're welcome to it," Alistair says with a small smile. "Anyhow, when I heard you thrashing around, I thought I should tell you. It was scary at first for me, too."

"Thank you," Marian says, smiling back. "I mean it. I thought I was going mad."

Alistair laughs. "That's what I'm here for: to deliver unpleasant news and witty one-liners." He sits back on his heels, then stands. "Anyhow, you're up now, right? Let's pull up camp and get a move on."

They wake Morrigan and move north.

\---

Two days later, they are close to the village on a long stretch of unused road. Marian hears something approaching and she stops, halting the other two in their tracks.

There's a long curve in the road ahead of them, blocking her view, and she peers through the trees lining the road... 

Something rockets around the curve, heading straight for her; it's long and low, close to the road, and obviously not human or darkspawn. Marian cocks her head – is that... She kneels down as it bounds up to her, and she was right. It's a mabari. It even looks familiar.

It barks at her happily, then turns around, facing bit of road it came from, and growls, its ears flat against its head.

"Weapons out," Marian says, her eyes on the road. She pulls down her staff and brings it around and that's all the time she has before a pack of darkspawn round the corner and stop dead at the sight of her. There's an Alpha and seven other darkspawn in the pack, but Morrigan proves to be as good as her mother claimed and the mabari does its fair share, ripping out hamstrings and crushing throats if the darkspawn are unlucky enough to fall. The darkspawn are soon slaughtered and their bodies burned, and only then does Marian turn back to the mabari.

It barks at her companionably, sitting back on its haunches to pant at her. "I think this is that mabari from Ostagar," she says to Alistair.

"He was probably out there looking for you," Alistair says. "He's chosen you. Mabari are like that. They call it imprinting."

"Huh," Marian says. She kneels in front of the mabari, smoothing her hands over his head and down his flanks to check for injuries. "Well, boy? Are you mine now?"

He barks at her, and she gets a face full of mabari breath. She groans. "You did that on purpose, didn't you?" He pants happily and she rolls her eyes. 

"Does this mean we're going to have this mangy beast following us about now?" Morrigan says, disdain crystallizing on every word. "Wonderful."

"Aww," Alistair says. "He's not mangy."

"What about it, boy?" Marian asks the mabari. "Are you coming with us?" She stands and takes a few steps toward the curve in the road, and the mabari rises and trots along at her side. "I guess I'd better come up with a name for you, unless you have an opinion about that as well?"

Thankfully for her sanity, the mabari doesn't answer.

"I think I'll call you Cú," she says. 

Morrigan sighs loudly. "If you are quite finished fawning over that mongrel, perhaps we could proceed while the sun is still shining?"

"To Lothering, then," Marian says, and starts walking.


	12. The Reunion

In all, it is five days walk to Lothering. Morrigan leads them through more than one path that Marian would swear hadn't been there before. More often than not they disappear when she looks back over her shoulder. Eventually she stops looking.

She is still not quite certain what to think of their guide. Morrigan has taken such a shine to sharpening the edges of her tongue on Alistair, who retreats deeper into his shield of silence with every passing day. She has no idea how to dig him out, and no chance to do so with Morrigan around. 

On the last day, Morrigan leads them through a cloud of brambles and onto what Marian recognizes as one of the old Imperial highways. Alistair pushes out behind her with a final stomp that speaks as loudly as a curse and looks around. 

"Well, there it is," he says, and Marian turns to see a large town in the distance. "Lothering. Pretty as a painting."

It's not far, perhaps half a day's travel to the west. Marian has never been so glad to see anything in all her life. They need so much – things they left in Ostagar that Morrigan couldn't possibly replace, camping supplies for the most part. They need food to appease the bottomless pit her stomach is becoming, and above all, they need news. Loghain still has the army – where is he? What is he doing? What story has he come up with to explain Cailan's death, and how are they going to get the truth out? Where are the darkspawn now? 

While she is lost in thought, Morrigan and Alistair snap and bicker at each other over her head. " _Shut it_ ," Marian says without looking around. She feels rather like her mother, keeping Carver and Bethany in line, and a sudden wave of pity and longing for her family rolls through her. Her mouth twists before she gets herself back under control. "Alistair," she says when she's sure her voice won't betray her. "You wanted to talk about something?"

"His navel, I suspect," Morrigan murmurs. "He's certainly been contemplating it for long enough."

"That's _enough_ ," Marian says, and the cold snap of it surprises even her. She takes a breath before continuing. "If the two of you can't get along we're done before we begin." They refuse to look at each other or at Marian, and for a brief, insane moment she wonders if she should make them apologize to each other the way her mother used to make her apologize to Carver... then she mentally throws up her hands and turns to Alistair. "Please, go ahead," she says.

"I thought we should talk about where we intend to go," he says slowly.

Marian hasn't been thinking as far ahead as Alistair apparently has, and she finds herself curiously uncaring; the future is so remote right now, consisting mostly of a list of impossible objectives. It's easier to restrict herself to the immediate present.

"I hadn't thought about it," she says out loud. "Who do we have treaties for?"

"The Circle," Alistair says, glancing over at Morrigan quickly; Marian bites her cheeks and says nothing. It would be the one bloody place in Ferelden she doesn't want to see ever again. "The dwarves of Orzammar, and the Dalish elves."

"Orzammar is in the Frostbacks, I know, but I have no idea where to find the elves," Marian says.

"If we head eastward towards the Brecilian Forest, we should hear word of one of the clans that wanders that area," Alistair says. "Hopefully they'll still be there. I also still think that Arl Eamon is our best bet for help."

"You said you knew the arl?" Marian asks. She doesn't want to pry, but... Well, all right, she _does_ want to pry, but she's not going to. From the shifty look on Alistair's face, she thinks he wouldn't tell her even if she did. 

"I grew up in Redcliffe Castle," he says.

Marian nods. "And you think he'll help us?"

"I do," Alistair assures her, much more confidently. "He's a good man."

"All right," she says. "Then Redcliffe it is."

A whistle sends Cú racing ahead of them to scout the road; after a moment to give him some lead, she follows him, leaving Alistair and Morrigan to sort themselves out. 

\---

As they approach Lothering, the stone of the Imperial Highway starts to become cracked and patched, with tufts of grass growing along the flatter parts. Night is coming on, and despite being well past Wintersend, the south of Ferelden is forever chilly and damp. Marian folds her arms around herself to hold her shivers in.

"Oh, look," Morrigan says drily. "A welcoming party."

Marian looks up to see a group of armed men scrambling up from sitting on the road. They've blocked the way, and the smiles on their faces promise things that she won't enjoy. She sighs. "I suppose I'm doing the talking?" 

A dispirited silence is her only reply. She rolls her eyes and strides forward, Cú at her side, as always. She does her best to warm her hands so she can cast. Just in case.

A skinny, weasel-quick one comes forward to meet her, a bright smile on his face. "More travelers to attend to," he says to his gang. "I'd guess the pretty one is the leader."

The thick-set one on his right looks her up and down, but it's not sexual the way she's expecting – he looks worried. "Er..." he says slowly. "They don't look much like them others, you know. Maybe we should just let these ones pass..."

"Nonsense," the leader says through gritted teeth, smiling for all he's worth. "Greetings, travelers!"

Alistair stands at her left, his shield fixed on his arm. "Highwaymen," he says in disgust. "Preying on those fleeing the darkspawn, I suppose."

"They are fools to get in our way," Morrigan says behind her. "I say teach them a lesson." She is more businesslike than before, and Marian prefers her this way, instead of the icy mocking she delivers to Alistair. 

"Now is that any way to greet someone?" the leader demands. He sighs mockingly. "A simple ten silvers and you're free to move on."

Marian rests her hand on Cú's head. "You should listen to your friend," she says quietly. "We're not refugees."

Marian is aware that she's not the most imposing of people – she's short, after all, and skinny and sort of knobbly. But surely Alistair, who is six feet if he's an inch and all over muscles, is slightly more intimidating. Come to think of it, haven't they ever seen a Grey Warden uniform? Or a war dog?

"The toll applies to everyone, Hanric," the leader says patiently. "That's why it's a toll and not, say, a refugee tax."

The light dawns in Hanric's eyes. "Oh, right. Even if you're no refugee, you still gotta pay."

Even if she wanted to, they couldn't afford to pay the 'toll'; they need every silver they've scraped up along the way, and in fact Alistair and Marian are carrying a good deal of miscellaneous items that Alistair says will be worth their weight in trade with the first merchant they meet. 

That's all beside the point, though. She doesn't want to pay and sees no reason why they should. "Alistair, do you happen to have ten silver on you?" she asks lightly, never taking her eyes off the leader.

"I'm afraid you find me financially embarrassed," Alistair returns in the same tone of voice. He takes one step to his left, giving them both clear room to draw their weapons.

"Well, you heard him, lads," she says, dropping her hand from Cú's head. Cú is being impossibly good; he's not even growling. Only she can feel how tense he is, his muscles coiled and ready for the initial lunge that would bring his target down to his level. "We don't seem to have a single coin on us." 

"Ah! And if I don't believe you?" the leader asks, mocking. "How do we solve this predicament?"

Marian reaches around and draws her staff. A heartbeat later Alistair has his longsword in his hand, and Cú shows his teeth. She doesn't need to look around to know that Morrigan has her staff out – she can feel Morrigan tapping into the Fade. 

"Pity," the leader says. "Let's finish this, gents!"

Cú is in the air before she can blink, barreling into Hanric and knocking him over. She slaps a force field around the leader and when she looks back, Cú has ripped out Hanric's throat.

" _Disable_ , Cú," she screams over the battle's noise, fighting the urge to vomit. "Disable, don't kill!" 

It goes better from that point; she freezes another bandit and leaves him to Alistair, turning to the next target. There were only five of them, and soon Morrigan is picking at an archer behind them while Cú snaps at his heels, and Marian and Alistair are tag-teaming the leader.

"All right," the leader says, throwing down his sword. "All _right_ , we surrender!" He swallows, looking around at the bodies of his men. "We... we're just trying to get by, all right? Before the darkspawn get us all!"

"You're extorting helpless people fleeing the darkspawn," Marian says flatly. Cú returns to her side, and despite her horror at what she'd inadvertently commanded him to do, and despite the blood soaking his fur, she leans into her dog. "You're a _criminal_."

"Yes, I'm a criminal," he says slowly. He sounds confused. "I admit it." When her face doesn't change, he adds, "I... apologize?"

Marian shakes her head and glances over at Alistair, who shrugs and continues cleaning the blood off his longsword.

"No," she says. "We're taking you to the guard, you and whoever else is still alive."

"There's no guard here," the leader says desperately. "There's just the templars, and they'll execute me!"

Marian sucks in a surprised breath and holds it, feverishly thinking; she doesn't _want_ to kill them, but... Then another thought comes to her, and she relaxes with a laugh. "Yes, and I'm sure you're being totally honest with me, but let's just go check for ourselves, all right?"

He looks from her resolute face to Alistair, who is giving a great impression of ignoring him completely, and then to Morrigan behind her; she has no idea what impression Morrigan is giving him, but he looks completely unnerved. "I'm not going down without a fight!" he cries, and lunges for his sword.

Marian wasn't expecting anything like this; Cú lunges from under her hand, but shaking her off costs him and she's too slow with her frost spell. The bandit nearly cuts her throat before Alistair impales him on his sword. Morrigan kills the archer behind them and then there is silence.

Marian bites her lip until she thinks her voice is steady again. Then she says, "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Alistair says dismissively, already leaning over the bandit leader's body. Then he glances up. "But you could stand to be a little sharper on the draw."

This part has never been to Marian's taste, but it's necessary if they want to buy any of the supplies they need... She sighs and leans over the body of the nearest bandit, searching for his coin purse. 

The bandits have done a brisk trade, indeed; they triple their coin and find a few choice items in the crates forming part of the barricade. Marian stands looking at the coin in her hands. She knows where it came from, and to her it looks dirty. She glances at Alistair. "Can we afford to give half of it to the Chantry?"

He smiles. "I think we'll manage." She smiles back, and after a moment Morrigan snorts.

"Perhaps you should wait for us on the other side of the town," Marian says to her. "You don't exactly blend in."

"Gladly," Morrigan bites, and stalks off. She is walking down the road, directly toward the break in the stone, a foot from falling to a painful death; Marian opens her mouth to warn her, but then Morrigan shimmers. In her place is a crow, which beats at the air with powerful wings and flies off down the road.

Marian blinks. "Did you know she could do that?" she asks Alistair.

He shakes his head, watching the crow that is Morrigan disappear into the distance.

"Me neither," she says. She resolves to ask Morrigan to teach her that very night, if she can; Morrigan might be annoyed with her now, but Marian has a very pretty surprise that might change her mind.

They take one last look around and it's only then that Marian notices another body hidden behind one of the carts in the barricade. She goes over to check him, but when she draws near she realizes that this isn't a bandit. The body is wearing plate armor, and it's difficult to turn over, but she finally manages to get the right leverage and the body flops onto its back.

The templar emblem stares at her from the chestpiece.

"Oh, _bugger_ ," Marian swears.

"What?" Alistair asks, mildly alarmed. He drops the much-used cloth and starts over to her.

"This one's a templar," she says, watching him out of the corner of her eye.

"They must have robbed him before we came along," Alistair says, kneeling down by the man's legs. "Poor sod." He doesn't seem unduly upset, and Marian turns back to the body. 

"Do you think the Chantry will want his things?" she asks.

"I'm sure of it," he replies. "I'll check down here."

Between them they find a note and a locket with a cameo painted inside. Marian reads the note, humming.

"He was on a quest," she says to Alistair, offering him the note. He shakes his head and she folds it up tight and presses it inside the locket. "For the Urn of Sacred Ashes, of all things."

Alistair shakes his head, but he seems more amused than anything. "A few of them go off every year to look for it. Most of the time they just come back, poorer but wiser. Some don't come back at all." He stands and pulls his tabard back into position.

Marian stands too, but she looks at the locket in her hands thoughtfully. "The note seemed more urgent than that. He said something about a conspiracy, and that many knights are seeking."

Alistair frowns. "Maybe something's happened?"

"Something like the king of Ferelden dying?" Marian points out. 

"Oh. Right," he says, drooping a little. Marian wishes she hadn't said anything, but it's too late to take it back; she turns and looks at the town to give him some space, and he leans over and picks up their packs. 

Lothering is both larger and smaller than Marian imagined; it's quite a large town, with scattered farming houses spreading out into the distance, but half of the houses are empty. A thin, steady stream of refugees pours in from the south, fleeing the Blight; they leave almost as soon as they come, heading for points north. Everyone seems to believe that the darkspawn are coming to Lothering next, and as Marian examines a map of Ferelden in her head, she has to agree. Much as Ostagar is the choke point for anyone wishing to move north from the Korcari Wilds, Lothering is the first stop the darkspawn will make before spilling out into the Bannorn.

They make their way to the center of town, and Alistair starts asking passers-by about merchants, and for any news they may have. Marian quietly listens to one woman's story of demons passing in the night to take her baby, and then drifts away. She is not as patient as Alistair seems to be, and she's nervous about the staff holstered on her back. Perhaps she should go wait with Morrigan – 

" – Bethany? You're sure?"

Marian whirls. There are two women behind her, walking away toward the other end of the street, their heads close together. One has long, grey hair, and the other, much younger, has curly black hair not unlike Marian's.

Marian takes one hesitant step, then another. Then she stops. _It's not an uncommon name_ , she tells herself. _You know what happens when you get your hopes up_ – 

It's too late, though; she knows that, too. 

She says something to Alistair and Cú, though she will never remember what, and follows the women to the end of the street, staying close by the housefronts as she passes. She's not sure why she's lurking around like a thief in the night – it would be easier to just go up and ask, but what if she's wrong? It's been ten years, and all she remembers of her mother is a child's idealized view of her parents. Bethany has had ten years to grow up. She's just seeing what she wants to see, that's all. 

Marian's heart feels like it's two sizes too large, gigantic with fear and hope in equal proportion, feeding on each other until she is a mess of emotions with no outlet. She feels like she's going to explode.

What if she's right?

The women turn into a tiny side alley leading to the river and Marian hesitates before peering around the corner. The alley is empty, and she takes a step in. _Where did they go?_ she wonders; there is no exit save the river, or climbing over someone's roof.

"Someone you're looking for?" A voice asks from behind her, and she turns. The younger woman stands before her, walking stick in hand, and glares at her. She cannot be more than sixteen, and Marian inhales sharply as the hope blooming in her chest becomes near unbearable. "Why are you following us?" 

Marian swallows. "I heard... Is one of you named Bethany?" she asks.

"Why do you ask?" the young one snaps. 

The older woman narrows her eyes, though, and searches every inch of her face. "I had a sister named Bethany," Marian says to the young one, though she cannot take her eyes from the older woman's face. "And I had a snot-nosed little brother named Carver – " Her voice creaks embarrassingly, and she stops.

"Marian?" her mother whispers. "Can that truly be you?"

She nods, taking a deep breath. "It's me," she says, and a tremulous smile grows on her face even while she's wiping tears from her eyes. "I'm home, Mama."

Her mother takes two long steps and folds Marian into her arms, and now she's not sure whose tears are running down her face but she knows she's laughing at the same time. Someone tugs her into a house and then Bethany is there too, and she lifts an arm from her mother's waist to cling to her little sister.

It's a long time before Marian feels able to disengage, but she keeps hold of their hands as she sinks down onto a chair and looks around. They're in a tiny kitchen with a tiny table and three chairs, and Marian recognizes a few things from her childhood: her mother's massive kettle and tiny cream pot, the breadboard, even the woven baskets. This kitchen smells just like she remembers their kitchen in Byerley. She takes great breaths in through her nose, relishing the smells of baking bread, of her mother's favorite sachets, and she sighs happily. 

"I can't believe I found you," she says, laughing. "I thought I'd have to search all of Ferelden."

"I'm so glad you did," Mother says, squeezing her hand. "Though I can't believe it either!"

"But where have you _been_?" Bethany bursts out, leaning forward over the table on her elbows. "I don't even remember what happened, but we had to move – and you didn't come with us? Where _were_ you?"

"I nearly roasted an annoying boy in the market," Marian says, her eyes drifting as she remembers that day. "He was a right little pig, though I suppose even he didn't deserve a fire cone," she admits grudgingly.

"Oh, Marian, you _didn't_ – " her mother begins, looking so aggrieved that Marian is half afraid she will travel back to Byerley just to apologize to the boy's mother.

"I didn't!" she says. "I swear! And it was a complete accident and no one should get upset in any way," she rushes on when it looks like her mother will go on about something that happened _ten years ago_. "Anyway, his mother went straight to the templars, and I knew that they'd come looking for me... " She is finding it hard to explain her reasons, and in the end decides to skip over that part. It's too much like justifying her decision, and she doesn't feel like it needs any justification. "So I ran out and told you and Carver to tell Father that the templars were coming," Marian says to Bethany. "And then I went back and waited for them."

"But _why_?" her mother asks, horrified. "Marian – " she takes Marian's hands and covers them with her own, like she's trying to shield the child Marian was. "We would have protected you, darling. If nothing else, we know how to cover our tracks." She glances at Bethany, and there's amusement there, sharing a joke that Marian doesn't understand.

"But it was my fault," Marian says, frowning. "And I couldn't just lead them to Father." She looks around. "Where is Father, anyway? And Carver?"

Her mother and Bethany exchange glances. A half-formed dread begins in her mind; _what aren't they telling her?_

"Carver joined the army," Bethany says, a faint note of pride in her voice. "He went to Ostagar with King Cailan."

"He what?" Marian demands. Her voice rises half an octave in distress. "Don't you – do you know what happened at Ostagar?"

"Yes," Mother says gravely. "Teyrn Loghain marched the army through two days ago. He took the bann with him, and all his soldiers."

"Was Carver with them?" Marian asks, seized by a sudden hope. 

"No," Bethany says. "But he's not dead." She smiles, so sure in herself that Marian cannot help but believe her.

"How do you know?" she asks.

"I've always known," Bethany says. "I always know where he is – he always knows where I am. We know if one of us is hurt. I would know if he were dead, because part of me would be dead too."

Marian waits for Bethany to say something else, to explain what on the surface is a completely mad statement, but she just laughs and Marian looks at their mother in confusion. 

"They've always been like that," Mother says, looking at Bethany in wry amusement. "I don't know how she knows half of the things she does about him, but... " She trails off. "I believe her. I have to."

"Then where _is_ he?" Marian demands. 

Bethany looks over her shoulder, to the south. "That way," she says, pointing south-west. "Two days. He keeps running into the foothills," she says with a wry twist to her mouth. "He's no bloody sense of direction at all."

There are only three chairs in the kitchen.

Marian's never heard of anything even remotely like this. She wants very badly to dissect it, to understand it, but there is something niggling at the edges of her mind, and it won't be quieted.

"Then Carver's all right," she says slowly. "Fine. Where's Father?"

Bethany and Mother exchange another one of those _glances_ , the ones that leave her feeling disturbed. "What is it?" Marian demands. "What aren't you telling me?" 

There are only three chairs.

"Your father died, my darling," her mother says slowly, holding Marian's hands so tightly they'll leave marks. "Three years ago."

"No," she says desperately. Her stomach drops, leaving an empty space in her chest where her heart should be. Her breath comes slow and shaking, and she can feel tears starting to form. Her eyes burn. " _No_ – " But her mother gathers Marian into her arms and Bethany comes around the table to pet her hair, and then the tears fall, hot and angry.


	13. The Volunteers

The time passes quickly from one story to the next until Marian can no longer keep her conscience at bay about deserting Alistair. She hugs her mother and sister and makes them promise that Carver is close and they will leave as soon as he arrives. They make plans to meet in Kirkwall, plans Marian is not entirely sure she will be able to keep, but she cannot bear to let them go so soon after finding them again.

As she leaves, she knows she is leaving part of herself behind, the best part. 

It is long after dark when she leaves, and the market is empty. She has just decided to find Morrigan's camp when a burst of noise catches her attention to a small pub across the way, the only place in Lothering that doesn't look like it's in a ghost town.

She'll just put her head in, she decides, and see if Alistair has succumbed to the siren lure of the bottle. She doesn't think he's the sort to drink away their supplies, but it doesn't hurt to be sure.

She opens the door into one large room with a long balcony on the back wall. Two men and a woman are scrubbing bloodstains from the floor. When he sees her, one of the men stands and comes over to her. 

"We don't want any trouble," he says urgently. 

"Nor I," Marian says, completely mystified. "Is something wrong?"

"Just _go_ ," he says, nearly begging. "The other one was bad enough – " His eyes flicker to the top of her staff protruding over her shoulder. She can see the horrified realization in his face. _Mage_.

She whirls and slams the door behind her; in her fury she doesn't even look where she's going, taking long strides into the darkness while she fumes. Don't they _realize_ that she'd never had a choice in what she is? She's not a blood mage or a maleficar, how can she make them understand? 

_I can show them I'm different,_ she thinks, and her steps slow. _I can go back – I can_ make _them see –_

She stops, horrified at herself and what she's thinking. It doesn't even feel like her thoughts, now that she's paying attention, and she traces them back and finds a demon at the other end.

 _Almost had you,_ it says, smug, then the presence in her mind fades and she is alone. 

Marian presses the heels of her hands into her eyes, feeling the stinging that announces another crying jag. She's balanced on the edge of a precipice, with a long drop and an unpleasant landing if she can't get control of her emotions. 

She misses her father. It has only been bearable these last ten years because she knew they would end. This is an ache that will never go away. 

She slowly bends her steps toward Morrigan's camp, paying more attention to the roiling mix inside her head than what's going on outside. When Cú tears up to her and nearly bowls her over with affection disguised as drool, she jumps. Alistair is close behind him. "Where have you _been_?" he says under his breath. "I've been looking for you everywhere – anyhow, I thought we could use some help." He takes her elbow and drags her forward – she's not resisting, she's bewildered and feeling slow and stupid. Today has been too much and she just wants to sleep. 

Alistair takes her to a redhead in Chantry garb, standing at the base of the windmill. She and Alistair look at her expectantly. 

"Um," Marian says, at a loss. "Hi?"

"Thank you _so_ much for letting me come," the redhead gushes with a marked Orlesian accent, leaping forward to take Marian's hands in hers. "I won't let you down! I know I can help you. The Maker told me so."

Marian blinks and slowly draws her hands away from Leliana's. " _What_?"

"This is Sister Leliana," Alistair breaks in, speaking fast as if that will make her forget what the crazy woman just said. "I was in the bar – don't look at me like that, someone told me the bartender had health potions for sale – and some soldiers of Loghain's jumped me. She saved my life, her and Cú."

"That's fantastic," Marian says through her teeth, pulling him away from Sister Leliana to speak privately. "Congratulations on your continued existence. How does that turn into bringing a completely mental stranger along?"

Alistair shrugs. "I know she's a little strange, but she seems more... 'Ooh, pretty colors!' than 'Muahaha! I am Princess Stabbity! Stab, kill, kill!'" His vocal contortions are fascinating, and Marian catches herself in a laugh before she can stop herself.

"We don't know her," she points out. "How do you know we can trust her?"

"I don't," Alistair says with another shrug. "But we need all the help we can get."

"But why _her_?" Marian asks, eyeing Leliana dubiously. 

"You and Morrigan are mages," Alistair says. "I'm on the front lines alone. She's sneaky, she'll do well on our flank."

Marian sighs. "Fine, but if she murders us all in our beds, I reserve the right to say 'I told you so'."

"Fair enough," Alistair says with a grin. "Oh, and before I forget..." He sobers, and without the good humor he looks as tired and unhappy as she feels. "Loghain passed through two days ago. He's saying that the Grey Wardens betrayed Cailan at Ostagar. There's a price on our heads big enough to attract every sellsword this side of the Waking Sea."

Marian absorbs that, one more blow in the fistfight that this day has been, and sighs. "Perfect," she says, looking down at her uniform, which she's quickly become attached to. "We'd better get rid of these, then." That more or less explains what the bartender was on about, but... "How do you know she's not after the reward, then?" she asks, eyeing Leliana again. 

Alistair rubs the back of his neck, sheepish. "I was pretty wrecked after the fight. She could have taken me if she wanted to, easily."

Marian is prepared to admit that perhaps her paranoia is getting out of hand. That doesn't make her any the less concerned.

"All right," she says, giving up. She turns away from Alistair, rubbing her eyes harshly. They're sore and gritty after her earlier emotional purge, and she needs to wash her face and drink a lake's worth of water and go to sleep.

She looks up to see a giant in a cage. His eyes are upon her, and she takes one shocked breath, but then the fright fades and is replaced by familiar curiosity. She draws nearer, unable to resist.

"You aren't one of my captors," the giant says in a deep, rumbling voice. He's just so _big_ , she wonders; even Alistair barely comes up to his chin, and Alistair is six foot if he's an inch. His skin is curiously grey under a purpley sort of brown, and his skull sweeps back past his ears before terminating abruptly. He is no human, nor dwarf nor elf, and that only leaves –

"You're a qunari, aren't you?" Marian demands. "What are you doing this far south?"

He eyes her with burgeoning interest. "And you are no villager, to recognize me at a glance," he says, then seems to lose his interest. "Begone, human. I will not amuse you any more than I have the other humans. Leave me in peace."

Leliana drifts closer, following Alistair as they notice her standing in front of the cage. "The revered mother said he slaughtered an entire family," she says quietly. "Even the children."

The giant spares her one assessing glance before he turns his eyes back to the night sky over their heads. "It is as she says."

"But _why_?" Marian asks, distressed.

He makes an impatient noise and glances down at her again. "Did I not ask you to leave me in peace?"

"You did," she returns, crisp and offended. "Goodbye." She whirls on one booted foot and stalks away, leaving Alistair, Leliana, and Cú to trail her like small ducks following their mother. She skirts the windmill, making for the ubiquitous ramps that lead back onto the Imperial highway.

"To be left here to starve, or to be taken by the darkspawn..." Leliana says, so quietly, but it hits Marian like a fist. "No one deserves that, not even a murderer." 

"Urgh, eaten alive by darkspawn," Alistair says, further back. "Fun. I wonder why the revered mother is so afraid of him."

"She is afraid of the Blight," Leliana says. "She cannot do anything about the darkspawn, but she _can_ do something about the qunari."

Her instinctive revulsion prompts an idea, which horrifies even her. _But he's a murderer_ , she protests to herself. It doesn't seem to make a difference. She sighs and stops. "Leliana, do you think the revered mother would release him to your custody?"

"You're going to let him go?" Alistair asks. "Is that really a good idea?"

"I'm not letting him go," she says. "He's coming with us."

She talks right over their objections and bullies them into agreeing. "She might still be awake," Leliana says finally. "I'll go now." She disappears into the darkness.

"Is this my revenge for recruiting Leliana?" Alistair asks, only half-joking. 

"Yes," Marian agrees with a faint smile. "So think carefully before you try it again." She digs into her pack. "Go with Leliana to the Chantry and deliver this," she says, holding out poor doomed Ser Henric's cameo and the note. "It mentions someone named Ser Donall. Oh, and they should probably know about the bandits."

"All right," Alistair says, accepting the locket. He looks slightly dazed at the stream of instructions.

Another thought strikes her. "Oh, and is there any money left over?" 

He smirks and digs out a coin purse, tossing it to her. It feels suspiciously heavy, and she raises her eyebrows at him.

"I'm not all muscles, you know," he says, grinning, and strolls off. 

"Come along, Cú," Marian says, slipping through the alleys toward her mother's house. 

\---

She returns, the coin purse much lighter, to find Leliana and Alistair waiting close to the giant's cage. "We have more news," Alistair says the instant he spots her. When she draws closer she can see that he's upset, tense lines drawn through his face and creasing his forehead. "Arl Eamon is ill. He's – " He breaks off, and Leliana lays a slim, comforting hand on Alistair's shoulder. He sighs. "Ser Donall said he's dying."

"They search for the Urn of Sacred Ashes, for a cure," Leliana says. "But none have found any trace."

Marian sighs. "We may need to rethink our first destination, then. But first things first: the key, Leliana?" Leliana takes a large wrought-iron key from her pocket and presents it to Marian with a smile. "Good," Marian says. "Stay here while I talk to him."

She approaches the cage, Cú at her side; the giant is still awake, staring at the sky as if he hasn't moved since they left him. "What more do you wish of me?" he asks her, startling her. "I will not indulge you in idle chatter."

"I don't really have the patience for idle chatter right now," Marian says. She holds up the key. "This is the key to your cage. The revered mother has agreed to release you into my custody."

"And who are you to persuade the priestess of such a foolish plan?" he says, watching her intently now. They must make quite the spectacle, Marian thinks, girl and mabari and qunari, all standing still as statues in the night. 

"I'm a Grey Warden," she says. "I am sworn to defend against the Blight."

The giant looks her up and down. "You are a Grey Warden? Even in the far north, we have heard the legends of their strength and skill." He scrutinizes her again. "But I suppose not every legend is true."

"And I've heard qunari called 'the warmongers of the north.'" She looks him up and down, deliberately aping his dismissive glance. "I suppose not every legend is true."

He snorts. "We are called a lot of things." He examines her once more, looking for what she can't say, and then he nods. "Very well. Set me free, and I will follow you against the Blight."

The key sticks for one heart-stopping moment, and then the rusted pins catch hold and the lock turns. The giant pushes the door open and she steps back, out of the way, as he comes out of the cage. He seems even larger, if that's possible, when out of the confining metal. He draws in a deep breath of air through his nose. "So it is done," he says, almost to himself. He looks at the stars once more before turning to Marian. "I will follow you into battle. In doing so, I shall find my atonement."

"What if I don't lead you to your atonement?" Marian asks carefully.

"Then I will find it myself." 

She believes him, she decides after a moment's thought, and nods. 

He inclines his head just a little. "I am Sten, of the Beresaad – the vanguard – of the qunari."

"I'm Marian," she says. She thinks of the tangle that is her name, and sighs. "Just Marian."

"Warden," Sten says, and the note of finality in his voice announces his intent to call her that forever. She rolls her eyes and hopes he can't see her face in the dark. "Lead the way."

\---

They're ambushed by a party of darkspawn on the highway, but with five in their party now they tear through the opposition – Marian personally witnesses Sten rip a darkspawn's head off with his bare hands, which is going to give her nightmares – and save a dwarf merchant and his son, who offer to give them supplies to make up what they're lacking. 

Morrigan has a giant fire burning well down the road, and she gives them an arch look when they tramp into the campsite, sore, tired, and laden down with things that Bodahn insisted on giving them. She and Leliana strike sparks immediately and settle down on opposite sides of the campsite to glare at each other, giving Alistair and Marian time to figure out where they're going next.

"If the arl is sick..." Marian says, trailing off. "Alistair, maybe it's better if we go somewhere else." 

"But what if he needs help?" Alistair asks, appealing. 

"We are neither of us healers," she points out. "I'm not sure there's anything we can do."

"But from here, Redcliffe is on the way to Orzammar," Alistair says, staring into space behind her. Marian suspects that if she turned around, there'd be an imaginary map painted in the air. "It's about a day's journey, so we'd be stopping there anyway. Can't we just, I don't know, stick our heads in?"

"Well reasoned," Marian says with a faint smile. "How can I argue with logic?" She shifts on her log, moving until she can see the whole camp. "Go on to bed," she says without looking at Alistair. "I'll wake you for third watch." It's so late that they're just now starting second watch and she's so tired, but this is the watch rotation they've been using this last week. It's not fair to change it up just because her entire world has turned upside down.

Alistair regards her critically, and she doesn't know what he sees in her but he leans back against another log and says, quite casually, "I'll take this watch. You look done in."

"I'm all right," she protests.

"Don't think I don't know what you've been doing," he says, fixing her with his eyes; then his expression warms. "Thank you. But now – I don't know what happened to you today, but it's your turn now." Alistair gets up and comes over to her, holding out his hand to lift her from her seat. "Go to bed, Marian," he says quietly. "It'll look better in the morning."

"Liar," Marian says, taking his hand. She sighs. "But thank you."

She cries herself to sleep in her tent, Cú warm and restless against her back.


	14. The Bastard

"Your taste in companions is lamentable," Morrigan remarks over their breakfast the next morning. "The qunari apparently do not allow mages to roam free." She pauses, drawing Marian's glance. "The precise word he used was _unleashed_." 

Marian's eyes immediately snap to Sten; he sits a little away from the other side of the fire and watches them with unblinking eyes. She and Morrigan share a glance, full of rage and the promise of vengeance, and in that moment she and Morrigan are the same; there is an all-consuming dark fire that burns in their hearts, the kind that feeds on the finer emotions and leaves nothing behind except anger.

It leaves her feeling strangely unsettled, and much closer to Morrigan than she had been before. 

They pack camp and leave for Redcliffe down the Imperial Highway. Marian reluctantly leaves her Warden uniforms in her packs and puts her Circle robes back on. It feels like going backward, reverting to the person she'd been only two weeks ago, someone whose only plan was escape, someone who had something to run to. She hates the reminder, but Alistair and Sten are even worse off, dressed and armored in what they could scavenge or trade for in Lothering. Then there's Leliana in her Chantry robes, and Morrigan, an obvious apostate... Marian surveys the motley group of people they've somehow assembled and sighs. They'll be lucky if they even make it to Redcliffe. 

It's five days hard walk to Redcliffe, and Marian ignores her companions to remember little things about her father: the way his beard pricked the palm of her hand when she patted his face, the seriousness with which he taught her the basics of magic, he and her mother teaching each other to cook, the look on his face when he brought her to meet Bethy and Carver. She does notice Alistair running interference for her, and she's grateful to be left alone with her thoughts. She needs them more than ever now. 

They trail down the path in a dispirited gaggle of tired and dusty travelers. When they finally sight the village, on the edge of Lake Calenhad far below, Alistair heaves a great sigh and turns to Marian. "I need to talk to you," he says. "Alone."

Morrigan huffs and wanders off; Leliana tows Sten away, chattering at him the whole way, and Marian turns back to Alistair with a raised eyebrow. If he's about to speak to her regarding her introspective silence, she has a few choice words about leaving the entire burden on her shoulders in the Wilds...

"Look, I need to tell you something I, ah, should probably have told you earlier." He's anxious enough that little lines have drawn themselves around his eyes and the crease of his forehead, and he doesn't seem to want to look at her.

She takes a breath. "All right," she says. "I'm listening."

"Well, let's see. How do I tell you this?" Alistair frowns. "Did I say how I know Arl Eamon, exactly?"

Marian tries to remember. "I think you said you grew up in Castle Redcliffe."

"Right," Alistair says. "He raised me. I'm a bastard." He takes a deep breath and starts speaking so fast that she has trouble keeping up. "My mother was a serving girl at Redcliffe castle and she died when I was born. Arl Eamon took me in and raised me before I was sent to the Chantry." He pauses for breath, and continues only reluctantly. "The reason he did that was because... well, because my father was King Maric. Which made Cailan my... half-brother, I suppose."

Marian stares at Alistair, speechless. " _What?_ " she manages after a minute of pure, dazed shock. He shrugs, uncomfortable and fidgeting under her glare, and then Marian actually looks at Alistair's face for the first time since they'd met and the resemblance between him and Cailan snaps into place like the answer to a riddle. If Alistair let his hair grow, or Cailan sheared his, they could have been fraternal twins. 

Suddenly so many things make sense. Alistair had been kept well out of things in Ostagar, where they needed every warrior. And he hadn't only been mourning his mentor.

"Does that make you a prince or something?" Marian asks, furiously reassessing their situation. This definitely made things more... interesting.

Alistair goes a shade of pale that she wouldn't have believed possible with his skin tone. "Maker's breath, I hope not! I don't think so... you don't think so, do you? I'm a bastard, and nobody even knows about me." The look he gives her is so appealing that she automatically opens her mouth to reassure him, but she stops herself. After a moment's thought, she sits on the river's edge, dangling her feet over, and watches the village far beneath her feet. Alistair joins her, and they sit in silence.

"So you're a royal bastard, huh," she says after a while. 

"Like I haven't heard that one before," Alistair says; when she looks over, he's just finished rolling his eyes at her, but he has the grace to look abashed when caught out. She smiles a little and then looks back at the village. It looks so peaceful from up here... 

"I would have told you," he says. "Really. It just... it never really meant anything to me. I was inconvenient, a possible threat to Cailan's rule and so they kept me secret. I've never talked about it, to _anyone_. Everyone who knew either resented me for it or they coddled me... even Duncan kept me out of the fighting because of it."

Marian looks up at Alistair, and he looks back; he is so sincere that his eyes are practically blazing with his wish that she believe him, and she does. Whatever his past, it's hardly the match of hers, and she has her own secrets that in the interest of fairness, she should probably tell him.

She smiles, a little ruefully, and Alistair heaves out a huge, relieved breath. "You're not mad?" he asks, carefully feeling for footing.

"No," she says, looking away. "If nothing else, we haven't had much of a chance to talk. I only met you – Maker, it hasn't even been two weeks since..." She glances at Alistair, wishing she'd stopped that sentence before she did, but he's not as upset as she expected. 

Marian wishes with all her might that there were fewer conversational pitfalls waiting to trip her around him. 

"True," Alistair says thoughtfully. "Well, I'm still sorry I didn't tell you sooner."

"So you grew up here?" Marian asks, taking in the incredible vista. The castle sits on its own, separated from the village by an expanse of glassy water. Tiny boats dot the water, and there are a few larger ships here and there, sitting far out from shore. She wonders if she still gets seasick; she'd been too upset to pay attention to her body on her trip with Duncan.

She wonders if her father ever sailed on this water. 

Cú barks up at her from the path below, and she leans out a little and grins at him, thankful for the distraction. 

"At the castle," Alistair says, his hand hovering near her arm. He drops it when she leans back. "Well, until I was ten." He looks over at the castle in the distance, shading his eyes against the bright sun. It's hard to read his face. "Arl Eamon eventually married a young woman from Orlais, despite all the problems it caused with the king so soon after the war. He loved her a great deal." He laughs, a short, irritated snort that tells her exactly how he feels about the arlessa. "She resented the rumors which pegged me as the arl's bastard. They weren't true," Alistair says, shrugging. "But of course they existed. The arl didn't care, but she did. So off I was packed to the nearest monastery at age ten." He stares down at the village, a haze of memories in his eyes. "Just as well. The arlessa made sure the castle wasn't a home to me by that point. She despised me."

"But you were just a boy," Marian objects, distressed. 

Alistair shrugs. "She felt threatened by my presence, I can see that now. I can't say I blame her. She wondered if the rumors were true herself, I bet." 

"Now you're making excuses for her," Marian says, unreasonably upset. She can't help remembering her earlier vision of Alistair as a child, the tow-headed little boy alone in the dark. "She was the adult. It was her responsibility to act like one."

Alistair turns to her and raises his eyebrow, smirking at her until she rolls her eyes and shoves him away. She scrambles up and whistles for Cú, who pretends to ignore her as he snaps at invisible small animals in the grass below. 

"I remember," Alistair says, and she looks back to see the dreamy haze of memory on his face again. "I had this amulet with Andraste's holy symbol on it. The only thing I had of my mother's. I was so furious at being sent away, I tore it off and threw it at the wall and it shattered. Stupid, stupid thing to do. And then – the arl came by the monastery a few times to see how I was, but I was stubborn. I hated it there and blamed him for everything... and eventually he just stopped coming." He grimaces, so clearly regretful at losing both the amulet and the arl's goodwill that Marian feels a not entirely unwelcome wave of pity.

"I'm sure he forgave you," Marian says, moved to comfort. "You were young."

He laughs. "And raised by dogs. Or I may as well have been, the way I acted. But maybe all young bastards act like that, I don't know."

Marian turns to look out at the castle, shading her eyes with her hand. "You think the arl will help us?"

"I think so, yes." His voice drops, apprehensive. "This news we've heard about him being sick disturbs me, though."

"Me too," she confesses. 

"I'm glad you know now," Alistair says. "Now we can move on, and I'll just pretend you still think I'm some... nobody who was too lucky to die with the rest of the Grey Wardens." There's a familiar note of sour jape there, poking fun at himself before someone else can get to it. 

"Is that really what you think?" Marian asks.

"I suppose not," he admits with the smallest of smiles. "At least I'm not alone." He turns away then and walking a little down the path, sticks two fingers in his mouth, whistling for her errant mabari much louder than she'd managed with breath alone. Marian resolves to make him teach her that as soon as possible.


	15. The Village

Alistair points out the bridge that leads to the steep, winding path down to Redcliffe proper and they cross it, only to be stopped on the other side by a young man, flushed and out of breath.

"Travelers?" he says, hope painting the words bright. "I scarce believed it – are you here to help?"

Marian exchanges a wary glance with Alistair. "Do you mean Arl Eamon?" she asks. "We heard he's sick..." She trails off, at a loss for anything else. A sort of prickling unease starts to walk up her spine.

"No, I – " He's incredulous, almost sputtering with it. "You don't know? Doesn't anyone know?"

"Know what, man?" Alistair demands. "Out with it."

Marian turns and waves for the rest of their companions to join them. "Yes," she says when she turns back around. "What's going on?"

"We haven't heard from the castle in days," he says, the hope disappearing from his face. He sounds half-dead already. "We've been attacked every night by the undead – monsters out of the castle – we've no army, no arl, no king, and with half of us dead already – " He stops and swallows. "And those who die come back to fight the next night," he says, pale with horror.

"Animated corpses," Morrigan says, with detached, clinical interest. "Fascinating."

Marian hates that she agrees, but – _necromancy_. It's in many of the tales of abominations that litter the Circle library, but the templars would never allow anything about how it works, or even the most basic principles behind it. As usual, she wants to know everything about everything, but in this specific case it's also about how that knowledge might intersect with other knowledge in the library in her mind. Who could say what kind of medical advances they could come up with if only they'd trust a mage long enough to read a bloody book? How were they supposed to prevent or reverse those kinds of abominations if nobody would let them do their research?

And another thing: where are the bodies coming from? Chantry law sets the rules for disposing of bodies in stone. They are to be burned no longer than a day after death, in part to avoid the very situation that appears to be happening here, and to prevent revenants. The Nevarrans go their own way in this, and of course many accidents and other things can happen that mean there might be skeletons in the village, but Marian thinks it more likely that whatever force is behind this has swept up the old ashes of the funerary pyres and used them as raw fodder for an army of undead. They are fighting their own family and ancestors, ground to ashes and animated by magic.

The man in front of them is young, about her age, and his face is haggard. Marian does not want to imagine what his life has been like, these last few days, and of course her mind betrays her and does it anyway. "You've made it this far," Marian says encouragingly. "So you must be fighting back."

"Bann Teagan is all that's holding us together," he says, brighter. "He'll want to see you, I'm sure."  
  
"Wait, Arl Eamon's brother is here?" Alistair asks, sounding surprised.

"He's in the Chantry," the man says. "Will you come with me? Will you help us?"

"We'll certainly come," Marian promises, "but I'm not sure what we can do."

He leads them down the precarious path that spills out into the village center, where a troop of unarmored villagers are practicing their archery. Casting an eye over her group, she separates Morrigan and Sten out with Cú and their bulky supplies to find them a campsite for the night; she cannot imagine two people who would enjoy visiting a Chantry less. Sten goes without argument, but Morrigan does not look pleased to be set aside; Marian points out that the Chantry is usually where the templars live, and that's enough to send Morrigan stalking off with ill grace. Cú romps after her as Marian sighs. _Well, at least someone's happy._

"Look," Alistair says to her in an undertone as they follow the man through the fortified square to the Chantry. "You do the talking, all right?"

"But don't you know the bann?" Marian asks, inadvertently loud. She makes a face at herself as their guide looks over his shoulder, and continues in a softer voice. "You said you grew up here."

"I know, I _did_ , but – " Alistair blows out his breath through his nose, and while it sounds irritated, he just looks... dismayed. "I'll explain later. I promise," Alistair says, when she just looks at him skeptically.

She agrees, glancing back to exchange a baffled look with Leliana, who clearly has no better idea of what's going on inside of Alistair's head than she does. Not that that's _hard_.

Alistair pushes open the heavy wooden doors leading inward. They cross into a dark room lit by candles; she pauses for a moment to let her eyes to adjust before following him in. There are a lot of children tucked into the corners of the giant hall, some with their mothers and some without, and quite a lot of the heavy wooden furniture favored in Ferelden.

The man weaves through the crowd and stops in front of a middle-aged man in heavy noble's clothing. He's dictating to a messenger; when he's done the messenger leaves and the other man turns to them. "Tomas, isn't it?" He says to their guide. "You're stationed at the West Road approach?"

"Yes, my lord," Tomas says, bowing. "These people were looking for the arl."

"Thank you, Tomas," the other man says in a kind dismissal, and Tomas bows again and leaves. "Well, you're obviously not simple travelers," he says, his eyes drifting from Marian's Circle robes to her staff, to Leliana's well-worn daggers, and landing on Alistair's scruffy, ill-fitting armor. They'd looted it off one of the bandit corpses in Lothering, and Marian could still see the neat slit in the side where Alistair had driven through his guard. "My name is Teagan, Bann of Rainesfere. Eamon is my brother."

Alistair shifts his weight, causing his armor to creak. He's smiling, at least, a rueful thing that opens up his face. "I remember you, Bann Teagan, though the last time we met I was a lot younger and... covered in mud."

"Covered in – " Teagan peers at Alistair's face, and just when Marian opens her mouth to begin introductions he suddenly breaks out in a delighted grin. "Alistair? Maker, you're alive!" They clasp forearms and she's left to wonder what kind of mischief ended with one covered in mud. Whatever it was seems to have left a lasting impression. Maybe she'll be able to get the story out of Alistair one day.

Teagan sighs. "This is wonderful news. We heard of Ostagar, of course, but we were led to believe all died with Cailan."

"Well, we're still alive," Alistair says, gesturing to Marian and Leliana. "Not for long, though. Not if Loghain has anything to say about the matter."

"You are a Grey Warden?" Teagan asks Marian.

"Alistair and I are," Marian answers, distracted. "I'm Marian, from the Circle. And Leliana has very kindly agreed to help us." She regards Teagan thoughtfully for a moment. "Why don't you believe Loghain's story?"

He snorts. "That he pulled out his own men to save them? That Cailan risked everything in the name of glory?" His face, so mobile, drops in sadness and in grief. It's only then Marian remembers that Teagan had been Cailan's uncle.

"I'm very sorry for your loss," she says, awkward but heartfelt.

"Thank you," Teagan says, one of the corners of his mouth turning up in a slight smile. "He was a good lad. Loghain's accusations..." He exhales, bitterness written in his downturned brows and tight mouth. "They are an insult to Cailan's memory. He calls you traitor, and murderer, and I do not believe that either. They are a desperate man's accusations, and nothing more."

She blows out a relieved breath. "I can't deny that I'm heartily glad to hear you say that, my lord." He's not the Arl of Redcliffe, but a bann on their side is nothing to sneeze at, especially when that bann is Queen Rowan's brother.

Teagan tilts his head. "And may I then ask why you're here, Warden Marian?"

"We need to speak to Arl Eamon," Marian admits. "Most desperately. We need his help."

"My brother is gravely ill," Teagan says, looking from Marian to Alistair. "We have not heard from the castle in days. We've tried shouting over the walls, but no one responds."

"What is happening here?" Leliana asks, bewildered. "The man on the bridge was raving about animated corpses."

"The attacks started a few nights ago," Teagan says. He runs a hand over his face; he suddenly looks so, so tired. She can't help herself; she reaches out, touching his arm, and tries to remember the way a rejuvenation spell is supposed to work. He gives her the ghost of a smile as Marian drops her hand. "They come from the castle. We drive them back every night, but so many have died already..." He sighs. "I don't know how much longer we can hold out."

There is really no choice to make, not here. "Let us help," Marian says, appealing. "Please." Certain of her party members would not be pleased with this decision, but they are far away; Leliana makes a delighted noise and Marian can hear Alistair sighing in relief.

Teagan takes an abrupt step forward, startling her, and takes both her hands in his. "Thank you," he says, so grateful it almost makes her uncomfortable for what, after all, is basic empathy. "This means – I can't tell you what this means to me. _Thank you_."

He sends them back out of the Chantry to the village mayor, Murdock, who has a grocery list of tasks that need done; she portions them out to her companions, sending Alistair back up the cliff to the knights, Sten to the dwarf, and Leliana and Morrigan together to the inn, where most of the militia wait for nightfall. And drink.

For herself she keeps the most essential, speaking to the village drunk, who also happens to be the only one who can repair the militia's equipment before nightfall. A simple promise to find his daughter is enough to spur him back to work, and it's the easiest promise she ever made; she is planning on going into the castle, after all. It's not exactly out of her way.

Her companions come trickling back one by one, each with news or new developments: Sten has accomplished his mission, but he's not interested in talking about how, which she should have expected from him by now. Alistair is in and out of the Chantry for the knights on the hill, only stopping by for a quick update; Leliana and Morrigan come back with a militia recruit each, one the greasy tavern owner and one Loghain's spy, who has a very interesting letter from Arl Howe, who the spy claims is Loghain's right hand. It's far more than she expected.

Marian goes back in to report to the bann, but she gets sidetracked by a crying girl, and then the girl's brother; she depletes their tiny purse even further to give Kaitlyn the money they need to leave, but at least no one sees her doing it. Though she's not sure what she'll tell Alistair when he asks her where all their money went...

When she's finished, Marian goes in search of their camp, which is on the edge of the lake on a kind of platform. It stinks of fish, and it makes her want a bath, or perhaps she'll just throw herself in the lake and roll around, the way Cú does in tall grass... Marian sighs. Sadly, there is no time for bathing. She sits on the edge and looks out over the lake toward the castle.

"Maybe I'll repel the undead with my stench," she says to no one in particular.

"Thank you for that mental image," Leliana says behind her; Marian tips her head back and smiles ruefully. "May I?"

"Of course," Marian says. "Welcome to my parlor." She regards Leliana thoughtfully while she sits, dangling her feet off the edge of the platform and kicking at the water with the toe of her boot. "I'm sorry we haven't had a chance to talk before," Marian says eventually.

Leliana smiles. "It's all right," she says. "You have been quite distracted since we met."

Marian sighs. "I also wanted to apologize," she says, her mouth twisting. "I think I said something very unkind the night we met."

"I don't blame you!" Leliana says at once, turning to look squarely at Marian. "Not at all." She laughs. "I must have sounded mad."

"And I believe I said so," Marian says, still upset with herself. "Right out loud."

"It's not important that you believe," Leliana says. "Only that you serve the Maker in the end." She is so sincere, so serene, that for a moment Marian envies her. What must it feel like to walk a path like that? To believe so strongly that your god has a plan for you? She knows herself too well; such a life would not suit her in the slightest, and even so she still envies Leliana her certainty.

"How do you know what the Maker wants you to do?" Marian asks curiously.

Leliana hesitates, turning to look back over the lake. Marian thinks seriously about taking back her question, but before she gets around to it, Leliana begins to speak quietly. "I don't know to explain it," she says. "I had a dream, and in it there was an impenetrable darkness... it was so dense, so real." She shakes her head, like she's trying to shake off a troublesome thought. "And there was a noise, a terrible, ungodly noise... I stood on a peak and watched as the darkness consumed everything. And when the storm swallowed the last of the sun's light, I... I fell, and the darkness drew me in..." Leliana trails off and sighs.

Marian chews on her lip, choosing her words carefully. "And you believe that this was the Blight?"

Leliana nods. "What else could it be? And then when I woke, I went to the chantry's gardens, as I always do. But that day, the rosebush in the corner had flowered..." She laughs. "Everyone _knew_ that bush was dead. It was grey and twisted and gnarled – the ugliest thing you ever saw, but there it was – a single, beautiful rose. It was as though the Maker stretched out His hand to say: 'Even in the midst of this darkness, there is hope and beauty. Have faith.'"

She doesn't _sound_ crazy. And how can Marian throw stones at someone else's dreams? Hers have not been so sanguine lately, even without counting the taint-fuelled horror. She wouldn't want anyone judging her for what her brain mulls over in the middle of the night.

Marian smiles at Leliana, and for the first time in a while she really feels it. "I'm really glad you're here."

Leliana smiles back. "Me, too."


	16. The Long Night

Marian decides that a nap is in order; it's only midday, but they've been traveling, there's Alistair's exciting news and the situation in Redcliffe, and later they're going to be fighting all the night through. She sets up the tent she's sharing with Leliana and lies down. At first, her mind is too busy to rest, but the sun is warming her tent, heating it until she starts to feel languid and slow...

_She has only one thing left to do._

_He's waiting for her at the end of the docks, thumbs tucked into his belt. The setting sun gilds his hair. She is not ready._

_He turns, for he must have heard her, and smiles. Hello, my love, he says._

_Well-met, she says quietly. When he holds out his hand, she takes it._

_Are you ready?_

_I don't know. I think I won't know until I'm there._

_He stills, turning more squarely toward her. There is no room for doubt, he says, gripping her hand tightly. If you're not ready, you should wait until next year._

_Next year I'll be too old, she argues._

_He falls silent, for she is right and even he cannot argue with the calendar. You must be ready, then, he says. Be sure._

_She lies._

_They climb the hill, walking along the edge of the river that drains into the lake below. The grade is too steep in places, forcing her to grip the grass in order to pull herself along._

_Once they reach the top, they find the rest of the village waiting, her family and friends and neighbors silent, solemn statues who part only to let her pass. The little elf boy is waiting for her, huge, uncertain eyes watching her every step. Poor lamb, she thinks, but even that is far, far away._

_Someone comes up behind her and traps her arms in case she tries to run. But she is ready, she is she **is** , and she will not run._

_They slit the elf-boy's throat and spill his blood on the ground; here, where so many have gone before. She can feel the Veil fluttering. Something is coming._

_Put it in me, she says._

_The demon comes._

Marian wakes with a strangled scream on her lips. The Veil is so thin here – how could she have been so abysmally and appallingly _stupid_ as to sleep unguarded where the Veil is so thin? Dreaming of the past is the _least_ that could have happened – She gasps for air, covering her face in her hands, and checks and checks and checks for parts of her mind that are not her own. 

She crawls out of her tent later, still shaken, and Morrigan takes one look at her face and sniffs. "I _did_ wonder," Morrigan says. Then she hands Marian a bowl of something hot and fishy. "You should be more careful."

It's starting to grow dark. Murdock mentioned that the horde comes at nightfall, and she wonders why that might be, if it's been set in motion by a creature that prefers darkness or perhaps it's a type of magic negated by the sun. She eats quickly, without tasting what she's putting in her mouth. Her appetite has been out of control since the Joining; Marian puts that on her mental list to ask Alistair at some point. No one is in camp except for herself and Morrigan, and she asks where the rest went.

"I believe they said something about checking over the defenses," Morrigan says, examining her face, her golden eyes narrowed. "You must know this is folly. You know your enemy, this man Loghain. Take the fight to him and leave this place to its own devices."

Marian frowns. "But they're dying."

Morrigan looks away, casually indifferent. "Then they must discover some strength within themselves to resist."

Marian puts the bowl down. She'll have to scrape it out before someone can clean it; she wonders where one goes to do that, if they use the lake here for cleaning as well as fishing.

"Morrigan," she says slowly, searching for the words. "I understand if compassion is an argument that doesn't hold much weight with you."

She's lying. She doesn't understand at all – these are _people_ , people who need their help. But she knows enough now not to say that within Morrigan's hearing.

Morrigan laughs, and Marian expects it to be some kind of cruel, cutting barb, but it's not. It's quite a nice laugh, actually. "Hardly."

"But it's not Loghain we're fighting, not really," Marian says slowly, looking for the right words. "It's the Blight, and the archdemon. And for that we need Arl Eamon, his soldiers, and his word at the Landsmeet."

Morrigan sighs. "Peace, Warden. I have no interest in arguing the point with you."

Marian cocks an eyebrow. "I have a name, you know."

"Indeed, I do know." Morrigan regards her coolly, but something about her eyes gives her away – she's enjoying this, as if it were a game. "Is there anything else?"

"Actually, there is," Marian says, quickly, before Morrigan can turn away. "Back in Lothering, you turned into a bird." She knows her voice gives her away, the wonder and excitement she feels at the idea of it, but she doesn't care. If it's a skill, she has to learn it. If it's a trait, she'll do nearly anything to gain it. And if she must play Morrigan's games, she will.

"Ah." There's a wealth of emotion resting on just one word: understanding, that ever-present amusement, perhaps even a touch of empathy. "I am a shapeshifter, 'tis true."

When Morrigan doesn't seem inclined to say anything else, Marian prompts her, as she knows she is expected to. "How did you become a shapeshifter?"

"'Tis a skill of Flemeth's, taught over many years in the Wilds." Morrigan smiles, her eyes fixed on the far-distant shore, where forest still reigns. "The Chasind have tales of we witches, saying that we assume the forms of creatures to watch them from hiding."

"Will you tell me some of the tales later?" Marian asks. Morrigan hesitates, but then she nods, a gracious queen. Marian smiles at her, hope and anticipation in equal parts. "But what I really wanted to ask you was: please, will you teach me?"

Morrigan considers her for a long, long moment and then shrugs. "You possess the necessary aptitudes. I see no reason why I should not."

The laugh that rips its way out of her throat could be called a cackle by the unkind. " _Thank_ you!" she says, delighted beyond reason, and before she can think better of it she darts forward and hugs Morrigan for all she's worth. She lets go and rises to her feet before Morrigan can say anything – though by the stunned expression on her face, Marian has succeeded in stealing her voice for a moment – and just before she turns away, she's sure that she sees a slight curve to Morrigan's mouth that wasn't there before.

But she's probably imagining things.

\---

When the others return, Marian has already changed back into her Warden uniform. She has Alistair's armor waiting for him.

"I thought we were being discreet," Alistair says reproachfully, but he's already digging in the pack for his things. Marian hides a smile.

"I don't think anyone here is feeling up to turning us in for the reward money," Marian points out. "And I don't think Bann Teagan would be too happy with them if they did."

"You make excellent arguments," Alistair admits. He looks up at her from the packs with his hands full. "Give me a hand?"

She knows that he _can_ take his armor off by himself – that's what he normally does, in fact – but the point is probably speed and efficiency. The sun is almost touching the horizon. Four hands make short work of his borrowed armor, stripping him down to his gambeson and padded breeches; Alistair allows himself one long stretch, reaching hard for the sky, before he starts strapping into his Warden uniform.

Marian helps him fasten the buckles under his arms and along his sides, but she leaves the rest to him and he's soon finished. He stomps his feet hard into his boots, slings his shield on his arm, and nods to her.

"Feel better?" Marian asks, a little amused.

"Maker, you've no _idea_ ," Alistair says with a grin.

She grins back. "Me, too."

Marian checks on the others; Cú needs only a touch-up on his kaddis, and Leliana and Morrigan are well enough, but when she reaches Sten, she notices him grimacing as he picks at the collar of his splintmail.

"You're not used to this kind of armor, are you?" Marian asks.

"I am not," Sten admits. "It is poor quality. I expect nothing better from humans."

Marian does her best not to roll her eyes, but it's tough. "What would you normally wear, then?"

Sten spares her a look. "Nothing you could find in this land."

"You'd be surprised," Leliana chimes in from behind Sten. "You can find nearly anything in Denerim, and I've heard marvelous things about Orzammar's markets."

"And you need something better than _that_ ," Marian says, eyeing the splintmail.

Sten sighs. "A paint for the face and chest called _vitaar_. Leather pants and reinforced boots. These things were stripped from me by your priestesses."

She can see that she's going to have to pin him down later on the specifics, but she lets it go for now, nods, and moves on.

They're as ready as they're ever going to be. She reports to Murdock, who sends them up the cliff path to reinforce Ser Perth and his knights at the undead's point of entry. 

And then they wait, and wait, and _wait_. The sun creeps down toward the horizon, but so slowly – is it always this slow? Marian squints at it, counting the seconds. 

"When do they come?" she asks Ser Perth.

"At nightfall," is his singularly unhelpful answer. "When the sun dips below the horizon."

They have near twenty minutes more to wait, Marian estimates with a mental groan. She has never been particularly patient. 

The battle tension inside her ratchets up as the minutes pass like treacle until her guts are tight as a spring. The worst part is that she's the only one who seems to be having any problems: the knights are praying, and her own little group is waiting oh-so-patiently. Alistair and Leliana are talking in low tones – and Leliana's _laughing_. It's so unfair.

Marian seems to be the most inexperienced of her companions in battle. It makes her feel safer, but it's not good for her ego.

Finally, _finally_ , the sun disappears to his rest beneath the earth and the sky begins to grow fully dark. 

"There!" One of the knights cries, pointing at the bridge that leads from the high road to Castle Redcliffe. A green miasmic fog tumbles down the length of it, heading for the road at impressive speed. 

"They are hidden in the smoke," Ser Perth says grimly, bringing up his shield, his sword bare in his hand. "Be ready. They will be here soon."

Her staff already in her hand, Marian checks her defensive spells one more time and puts them out of her mind. She and Morrigan are staying back while the melee fighters move forward to man the barricades. Marian mourns the opportunity to use her area spells, but she's learned her lesson there. 

She thought she was ready, but nothing could have prepared her for the first sight of their enemy. 'Undead' is such an imprecise word – she'd been imagining corpses, Marian realizes. Instead, they're skeletons, identical in every respect, as if formed from the same pattern. They pour forth from the high road in a flood – there are so _many_ of them – 

Marian realizes that she's wasted precious seconds of battle time being shocked; indeed, Morrigan is already hard at work. Furious with herself for her inattention, she scolds herself fiercely, picks one of the skeletons at random, and sets it on fire.

The flood of undead reaches the barricades and the men there drive them back with shields, with blades, and Leliana dances between them, separating arms from shoulders and ribs from spines. The skeletons only go down – she refuses to say they die, because that would imply that they're alive in the first place and that is _not happening_ – the skeletons are only _vanquished_ by decapitation or by fire. 

Marian sets to work with a grim will with electricity here, frost there, and fire everywhere; every so often one of her allies needs healing, or someone becomes overwhelmed and she sends Cú racing to their aid. 

She thought they would come in groups, or clumps, but it is a true flood and the flood doesn't _stop_. She is near to scraping the bottom of the barrel when the first of the undead breaks through the makeshift barricade. It staggers as one of the knights takes a chunk out of its leg, but then it is truly through and clumping along toward her, faster than it has any right to move. 

Her breath catches in her throat and she discovers the tiniest inner reserve powered by sheer terror. She backs away, step by step, firing spells as fast as she can scrape the will together, but it's not enough, it reaches out and it's going to _touch_ her – 

Cú races up behind the thing and rips its other leg off, which does not kill it but at least it's down on the ground, pulling itself toward her with its arms; Marian can fry it into paste in her own time. 

She takes a second to breathe when it's truly down and done and then looks up; but the things have not stopped coming in the meantime, and more have taken advantage of her inattention and the new hole on the left flank. Sten is surrounded by the undead and he's struggling; his greatsword does an incredible amount of damage, but even he cannot swing as quickly as he needs to to keep them off of him. Marian directs Cú around the edge of the crowd pressing in on him and sets fire to one, but then more are coming at _her_ and Morrigan is being forced backward one step at a time by a persistent pair -

It's a true melee now, and the only bright spot she can see is that the flood coming down the path has trickled down to one or two every few seconds. How did she think that the six of them could make a difference? They're going to get slaughtered.

Unless...

Marian takes a quick inventory of her companions – mercifully, none of them are down, but one or two of the knights are on the ground. She takes two careful steps to her right and spins flame from her hand and staff in an ever-widening cone; then she does it again, and again, until she's breathless and there is nothing left to fight.

She clings to her staff, breathing hard, and forces herself to look up and check the battlefield; she will not make _that_ mistake again. _Only a thousand others._ Sten decapitates two skeletons with one heavy stroke, and then they're the only ones left standing. The fog the skeletons brought starts to dissipate a bit in the breeze off the lake, but it's only after the others start to put their various weapons away that Marian lets herself relax.

Morrigan has a nasty gash on her upper arm that is bleeding quite rapidly, but otherwise her party seems to have gotten off rather lightly. She directs a weak, wavering heal at Morrigan's arm; then she starts to check on the knights on the ground, but Ser Perth waves her off. He kneels by each body in a short prayer, and all the while Marian stares at the dead knights on the ground until Alistair takes her elbow and shakes her. When she looks up, he says, "We're not done yet!" and points.

There's a man running up the village path; Marian can see the village center from here, and it's swamped in the same green fog.

"The monsters are attacking from the lake! We need help!" the man says, panting. 

Marian closes her eyes and prays for strength, for luck, for fortitude. Then she opens her eyes and sets off down the path at a run.

There are more defenders down in the village square, which is good; they're mostly militia and inexperienced villagers, which is bad. Teagan fights well, and Murdock looks like an old hand, but the rest – well, she'll have to keep an eye on them and be ready with the healing. 

She wishes fleetingly for a whole bucket of lyrium potion, but she only had four and she gave two to Morrigan, who looks nearly as wrecked as she does. 

Alistair yells, shockingly loud, and throws himself into the fray, followed closely by Sten and Leliana; Cú circles around the flank and drives the skeletons into their waiting swords. They've got a good rhythm and Marian decides it's better to pick off enemies around the edges rather than interrupt.

Down here, the pattern is different; this time they come in the clumps she'd expected, eight or ten at a time. They pass through the barricades easily, and once Marian notices it she starts to fume – what is the _point_ of a barricade that's undefended? The barricades ring the Chantry doors, where the villagers huddle for shelter against the undead, and if they were properly defended, she thinks this fight would go very differently.

There are only a few left in this group, which means two or three defenders can go after a single skeleton and this way, they're quickly handled. More will come any second now, if the pattern holds, and there's no time for anything but a quick glance, a silent prayer, a heal spell if anyone needs it, and then someone yells and the world narrows back to fire, and magic, and the sounds of the sword. 

Marian is thoroughly jealous of their swords, if she's to be perfectly honest. She loves her magic. It's a part of her she wouldn't give up even if she could. It fascinates her endlessly, but – 

But she cannot use it the way Leliana uses her daggers, or Sten his sword: endlessly, relentlessly, like the tide washing away the beach. She could try, it's true. She could use all her power and dig for more, crack open her connection to the Fade and allow it to suffuse her, to stream out through her like a river. 

And then she would die. Well, the demons would probably come first, but she would die all the same. Her body exists with magic, but it's a delicate balance: not enough and she'll be demon food before she can blink; too much, and it would suffuse her cells and hyper-charge them and then she would explode.

She finishes off the one she's fighting and looks around for her next target. Then Alistair takes a bad hit to the head that knocks him off his feet. She swears and sends Cú racing to the rescue; Sten stands over him, greatsword clearing a space around them until Alistair digs his shield into the ground to lever himself back to his feet. Marian flings a heal in his direction and watches for a moment to make sure he stays up.

Unfortunately, her moment of inattention costs her. Something comes around her like a band of steel and she screams in shock and anger – she can't move her arms at all, and she'd used the last of her magic healing Alistair – 

She can't bear the thought of one of those things _touching_ her, what it might leave on her, what if there's a demon in it? She pulls and pulls and pulls on her connection to the Fade, but Marian knows it'll take at least ten more seconds until she's recovered enough to cast _anything_ , and even then she has nothing that she can cast that'll destroy it and leave her standing.

_We can kill it, if we are together. We can kill them all._

"Marian!"

Alistair's shout is the best thing she's heard all _day_ – "Get it off," she says, almost begging, shoving hard at the presence in her mind. "Get it _off_!"

Marian feels a blow like a giant's fist echo through her and she hears something fall to the ground. The skull rolls away from her down the slope, but the bones around her chest are locked in place. 

"Hold on," Alistair says from behind her, voice taut with worry. His arms come around her over the skeleton's, and he pries them open with a shout of explosive effort. Marian scrambles away, her eyes wide, and stares at Alistair, panting for breath. It's just reaction, at first, but then a skeleton tries to swing for Alistair's head and Marian uses the last of her magic to freeze it in place before it can connect. Alistair spins and slams his shield into it, shattering it into pieces, and just like that everything is quiet. 

The sky is so light. Marian turns around, looking east, and yes, the sun has just risen. They're alive.

Alistair sheaths his sword and slings his shield. "Are you all right?" he asks her, approaching her like he would a startled horse.

"I'm fine," she answers quickly, a tight smile on her face. She knows she's not fooling him, but it's not the time. He nods and moves to check on the villagers. Marian calls her mabari first, and something in her eases when Cú bounds up to her, no worse for wear. He stands by her as she heals Morrigan again – her hasty heal up on the cliff has come undone – and tends to Leliana, who took a stab wound in the shoulderblade. 

Of course, Sten is fine. 

She cannot say the same for Murdock, though, or Loghain's spy, who died up on the cliff with the knights. Several of the militia have also fallen. They help lay the bodies in a line on the far side of the great clearing; the Chantry will build a great pyre later for the defenders of Redcliffe.

Teagan approaches them as the sun rises more fully over the horizon, painting the village beautiful again despite the bloodstains. 

"Dawn arrives, and we have survived the night," he says with a weary smile. "We are victorious, thanks to you."

"I only wish we'd saved more," Marian says, unable to stop her eyes from flickering over to the neat line of wrapped bodies.

"None of us would be here if it weren't for you and your friends," Teagan says, taking her hand. "The Maker smiled on us when he sent you here in our darkest hour."

Over Teagan's shoulder, Marian watches the Revered Mother praying over the bodies. The sisters surround her, one swinging a censer, others carrying wood and oil for the pyre. 

"Warden?" Teagan asks, in the tone of someone who's had to repeat themselves more than once. She is intimately familiar with that tone. 

Marian becomes aware that she's been staring into the space over his shoulder for longer than is socially acceptable. "I beg your pardon," she says hastily.

"It's no matter," Teagan says with another smile. "You must be weary." _I was trying not to think about it, but now that you've mentioned it..._ "We've struck a blow," he says. "Maker willing, we can use it to reach my brother. We've no time to waste. Meet me at the mill. We can talk further there."


	17. The Prisoner

Marian gathers up her companions, makes doubly sure they're all right, and then leads them back up the cliff path. Someone has cleared away the bodies, but the skeleton pieces are still laying scattered on the ground. She'd wondered a little if they'd vanish in the sunlight, but there they are.

She turns away from them, spotting Teagan on the other side of the clearing, staring out over the lake at Redcliffe Castle. She feels awful, leaden and gritty and sweaty from their long night, and she's in no hurry to find out what new thing they must do.

Except she is. _Fuck_.

Marian sighs and moves closer, deliberately making noise.

"Odd, how quiet the castle looks from here," Teagan says, and Marian thinks that he must have grown up there, from the wistful way he speaks of it. "You would think there was nobody inside at all."

Marian raises her eyebrows. "Isn't Arl Eamon in there? And his wife, and the servants?" She hasn't forgotten her promise to the smith, and she intends to keep it.

"Presumably," Teagan says, turning. "That's why I wanted to speak to you. I had a plan... to enter the castle after the village was secure. There is a secret passage here, in the mill, accessible only to my family." He gestures to the mill – as if she could miss it!

"If you have a way in, why didn't you use it in the first place?" Marian demands.

He frowns at her. "I could not leave the villagers – Maker's breath!" Teagan breaks off abruptly, looking over her shoulder in shock. Marian half-turns to look at the path to the cliff, and she's already got her hand on her staff – more skeletons? – but there's nothing there except a woman running toward them, a woman who wears the same kind of rich clothing Teagan wears. Alistair groans, so quietly that she almost doesn't hear him.

The woman stops beside Marian, panting, focused so hard on Teagan that Marian thinks she doesn't even know that the rest of them exist. "Teagan," she says, panting. Her accent is Orlesian, which Marian would say was strange to find in Ferelden's heartland, but Leliana is here too. "Thank the Maker you yet live."

"Isolde!" Teagan says, still shocked. "You're alive!" He shakes his head, stepping forward, appealing. "What _happened_?"

So this is Arlessa Isolde, ruiner of Alistair's childhood? She's very pretty, Marian thinks, looking her up and down. Despite her run down the path, she is very neat and impeccably clean, with clothes just so and not a hair out of place. She reminds Marian of a porcelain doll.

Next to her, Marian is a sweaty, dirty, smelly mess who's been up fighting all night. But what else is new?

Isolde shakes her head. "I do not have much time to explain," she says, a little wild. "I slipped away as soon as I saw that the battle was over, and I do not have much time." She draws herself up to her full height, which is slightly shorter than Marian, and speaks with authority. "I need you to return to the castle with me, Teagan. Alone."

"That's a _wonderful_ idea," Marian says, and it only surprises her a little that it comes out like Morrigan, sarcastic and snide. "Why don't we all go?" She turns to her other side to check with Alistair, but he offers her nothing more than a quickly raised eyebrow. She turns back to Isolde with a smile that doesn't reach her eyes.

Isolde frowns at Marian. "Who is this woman, Teagan?" she asks, turning a simple question into something distinctly unkind.

Alistair comes to her rescue. "You remember me, Lady Isolde, don't you?" He sounds mostly like she feels, but with an added layer of seeing someone he clearly never wanted to see again, despite the excuses he made for Isolde when he told Marian his story. 

Marian moves out of the way when Isolde glances over, and then quickly looks back in the most obvious double-take she's ever seen. "Alistair?" she asks, clearly incredulous, a frown making its way onto her face. "Of all the... why are _you_ here?"

Marian bristles at the clear displeasure aimed at Alistair – he's worth _twelve_ of her. "We're Grey Wardens," she says through clenched teeth.

"I owe them my life, Isolde," Teagan puts in, trying to deflect the conversation.

"Pardon me," Isolde says, looking from her to Alistair to Teagan with growing uncertainty on her face. "I would exchange pleasantries, but considering the circumstances..."

"Which are?" Marian says, tilting her head. If Isolde must be prompted to answer their questions, then that's what Marian will do.

" _Please_ , Lady Isolde," Alistair adds, out of patience. "We had no idea anyone was even alive in the castle."

Isolde wrings her hands. "I know you need answers, but I don't – " She glances at the castle in the distance, and that seems to make her more nervous. "I don't know what is safe to tell." She looks from Teagan to Marian, dismissing Alistair and the rest of her companions. The silence which greets her seems to disconcert her, but she reluctantly continues. "There is a terrible evil within the castle. The dead waken and hunt the living. The mage responsible was caught, but still it continues." Isolde is obviously afraid now, glancing back at the castle intermittently. "And I think Connor is going mad. We have survived, but he won't flee the castle. He has seen so much death!" Isolde is nearly begging at this point. "You must help him, Teagan! You are his uncle. You could reason with him. I do not know what else to do!"

Connor must be her son, then. Quite against her will she feels a wave of sympathy for Isolde. 

"What about Arl Eamon? Is he still alive?" Alistair asks, tense. 

Isolde nods. "He is being kept alive so far, thank the Maker."

" _Kept_ alive?" Marian seizes on her choice of word.

"Kept alive by what?" Teagan asks, more to the point.

Isolde looks at the castle again. When she looks back, she is so clearly picking her words that Marian _knows_ she's hiding something. "Something the mage unleashed," Isolde says slowly. "It allows us to live, I do not know why, but the others – it's killed so many, turned their bodies into walking nightmares!" 

Some _thing_ the mage unleashed, Isolde said. There's not a lot that could be other than a demon, which cannot touch the living world in its natural form; so there's an abomination in the castle sending hordes of undead at the village every night.

And yet it leaves Eamon, Isolde, and their son alive. What is wrong with this picture?

"It allowed me to come for you, Teagan, because I begged, because I said Connor needed help," Isolde says. Her anguish when she speaks of what must be her son is a living thing, throbbing in her voice. 

Marian wants to help, she _does_ , but... "Lady Isolde," she says gently. "If we're to be of any use, we need to know _everything_."

The poorly hidden shock in Isolde's eyes confirms that her suspicions are at least warranted. "I – I beg your pardon," Isolde says, manners warring with indignation. "That's a rather impertinent accusation."

"But you're not denying it?" Marian asks. 

"I came for _help_ ," Isolde says, turning to appeal to Teagan. "What more do you want from me? Please, I do not have much time – what if it thinks I am betraying it? It could kill Connor!" She's really, truly crying now, wiping the tears off her cheek as fast as they fall.

Marian feels heartless, but she also knows that she's supposed to. Abominations are nothing to take for granted, and she needs every scrap of information she can get – 

Assuming she can trust that information, that is. She has not forgotten that one of the prime uses of blood magic is mind control. 

Marian sighs. "Lady Isolde – "

Isolde keeps going, talking right over her like she's not even there. "Teagan, _please_ , come back with me – must I beg?" The plea could melt stone.

Teagan squares his shoulders. "The king is dead, and we need my brother now more than ever. I will return to the castle with you, Isolde," he says, his eyes flicking over to Marian and Alistair as he does. Marian raises her eyebrow, inviting him to elaborate, but he looks back at Isolde instead.

Isolde seizes his hands. "Bless you, Teagan. _Thank you_."

Teagan smiles a little, pats her hand, and then lets her go. "Isolde, can you excuse us for a moment?" he asks. 

Isolde looks at him, then at Marian and at Alistair before she works up a smile. "Of course," she says. "I will wait by the bridge." The smile fades from her face, and she glances at the castle again. "But please do not take too long."

Isolde leaves them, walking quickly back up the path to the bridge. When she's out of earshot, Teagan turns to them and speaks very quickly indeed. "Here's what I propose: I go in with Isolde and you enter the castle using the secret passage. My signet ring unlocks the door. Perhaps I will distract whatever evil is inside and increase your chances of getting in unnoticed."

Marian shakes her head. "You can't. You should know: the thing she's talking about is probably an abomination. You are not equipped to handle an abomination." She looks over at Alistair, her brows drawn together in concern. "I'm not entirely sure _we_ are." 

"And yet I don't believe either of us has a choice," Teagan points out, and she looks back. "Your business with Eamon is obviously important, and I cannot and will not leave my brother in there. We're going to have to go in eventually."

"Without Arl Eamon, we'll never get the support of the Landsmeet," Alistair points out. 

Marian sighs, rubbing her neck, and nods. 

"If you can get the castle gates open, Ser Perth and the knights can enter and help," Teagan says. "I don't think there's anyone else who is up to the task." He holds out his hand for hers, and when she gives it to him, he turns her hand over and presses his signet ring into her palm and closes her hand around it. "There is a trap door in the mill. This will unlock it." 

The ring is very cold in her hand, and the edges dig into her skin. 

Teagan raises his head. His eyes bore into her, more serious than ever. "Whatever you do, Eamon is the priority," he says. "Isolde, me, anyone else... we're expendable."

"I don't believe that," Marian says at once. She can't. If she starts to think that way – She just can't, that's all.

Teagan smiles. "The Maker smiled on me indeed when He sent you to Redcliffe. Farewell... and good luck." He releases her hand and bows to her, and then he strides off to the path where Isolde waits. 

"We're just going to let him go with that woman?" Leliana says behind her, appalled. Marian turns around to face her companions, and they're all staring at her like she's the one making the decisions. It's unnerving. "It seems so dangerous!"

"A foolish plan," Sten agrees critically. 

"And yet it is the plan," Marian says, gesturing at Teagan's retreating form. He's too far away to call back, and too stubborn to change his mind at a word. "So we'd better do our part."

The windmill is unlocked and tiny inside; it takes a bit of searching to find the trapdoor, covered in hay, and then even longer to find the place in which the ring will fit. It's a small recess on the side of one of the stones. Marian presses the ring in, which does nothing; she turns it to the right, and then to the left, and that's when she hears a _click_ followed by something heavy falling away. 

"That sounds like it worked," she says, sitting back on her heels. "Leliana, would you take point?"

"Gladly," Leliana says, and lifts the trapdoor. There's an old wooden staircase that leads down into a tunnel of smooth, grey stone. It's very dark and very quiet and a little damp; they must be right under the lake, Marian thinks, fascinated. How old is this tunnel? She sparks her little wisp light and sends it up, over their heads, to examine the stones there. They're not wet. How deep underground are they?

"There's a door," Leliana whispers. Marian sends her light up so that Leliana can see the lock she needs to pick, but it only takes her a moment. She cracks the door open and listens. "Someone is being attacked," Leliana says after a minute. She glances up at Marian for permission, but Marian's already got her staff in hand; Leliana shoves the door open bodily and she's first through, followed by Alistair and Marian.

 _More fucking skeletons_ , Marian thinks in a fury, reaching for fire. There's only three of them, and with five people and a very determined mabari, they're put down in under a minute. It's satisfying.

 _But Leliana said someone was being attacked_ , she thinks, looking around. They're in a slightly larger hallway now, and there are doors on each side. It looks like a dungeon, actually, disused and decrepit.

"Hello?" someone says from inside one of the cells from her left. "Is there someone out there?"

She'd know that voice anywhere. 

Instantly she's furious, seething with rage, and she stomps over to the cell door, not bothering to put her staff away. 

Jowan stares at her through the cell bars. "Marian," he manages after a minute.

" _You_ ," she says, nearly spits it out. "I let you go, and this is what you do with it?"

"You're angry," Jowan says with a huge sigh. "Considering... well, I'm not surprised. You have a right to be, after everything I've done." 

Marian laughs bitterly. "So you just admit it? From blood mage to abomination, murder, necromancy, and you just stand there and ' _you have a right to be_ '?" Her imitation is cruel, if accurate, and Jowan winces.

"Not that!" Jowan says in horror. "I'm not – I didn't summon those _things_ ," he says, glaring at the skeleton corpses on the ground. "I'm not an abomination. But..." he trails off and sighs again. "But I did poison Arl Eamon. For all I know, he's already dead."

"You _what_?" Marian yelps. She closes her eyes and prays for patience, for forgiveness. _Oh, Maker_ , she thinks miserably. _Everything here is my fault._

"I know," Jowan says, hanging his head. "I – it was a terrible thing. But I swear I'm not behind the rest of it." He pushes up to the bars, hands wrapping around them as he stares at her through the iron, pleading. "Marian, I _swear_."

She can't believe him. But Maker, how she wants to. 

"Listen," he says. "Think whatever you want of me. Do whatever you want to me, but _please_. What happened to Lily?"

Marian stares at him, taken aback. This is more like Jowan-her-friend than she'd believed possible. She'd assumed that Lily was just a part of his plan, that he'd been lying to her the way he'd lied to Marian, that she'd just been a pawn, but now he sounds – Could he really have cared for Lily that much? 

Her assumptions are clashing uncomfortably with the evidence of her own eyes and ears. But there might be a way...

"Why do you care?" she asks him, keeping her voice hard and hostile. It's not hard. 

Jowan's fingers tighten on the bars. "The thought that she might have paid for my crimes..." He shakes his head. "Do you know, or don't you?" he demands.

She watches his face. "You heard Greagoir, Jowan. They sent her to Aeonar."

He closes his eyes, presses them tight – she can see his eyelashes trembling – and doesn't speak for a long, long moment. "She must hate me now," he says eventually, choking on it. "What have I done?"

Marian fights with herself for what seems like an age before she swears viciously at herself, gives in, and puts away her staff. She's not going to kill him now. She's not sure she ever would have. She's sure now that he's not an abomination, as sure as she is of her own name – or names, as the case may be.

"They would have made me Tranquil," she says. It's more of an effort to keep the bitterness from her voice than she expected. That's where Greagoir had been heading, after all, before Duncan cut in. Or she could have been executed, of course, but why waste a mage? "But I suppose that doesn't matter to you." 

"Of course it does," Jowan says, sounding almost angry. "How can you think that? But you're here, you're all right, and she's not." He eyes her uniform. "And you're a Grey Warden now, it seems."

"The Warden-Commander recruited me out from under Greagoir's nose," Marian says, almost numb. 

She doesn't know what to say, or what to think, or do, and she and Jowan end up staring at each other for a long moment before he speaks again. "What happens now, then?"

"Now you tell me exactly what happened here," Marian says. "And every word had better be the truth." There's a threat in her voice that Jowan doesn't miss; he lets go of the bars and takes a step back, maybe to get away from her. 

She's never spoken to him like this. Maybe she should have.

"I'm really not responsible for the killings and the creatures," Jowan says in a rush. "I was already locked in here when it began." Marian nods for him to continue, and he does. "Lady Isolde came down here with her men demanding that I reverse what I'd done. I thought she meant my poisoning of the arl." He looks away, like he can't face her. "That's the first I heard of the corpses. She thought I'd summoned a demon to torment her family and destroy Redcliffe." 

His voice is climbing, the way it does when he feels victimized and blameless. It used to make Marian feel protective, but now it just gets her back up.

"She had me tortured," Jowan says in a low voice, staring at the wall behind her. "I couldn't... do anything, or say anything, that would have made her stop, but she wasn't satisfied with that. Eventually they left me to rot here." He laughs, sharp and self-loathing. 

"She _what_?" Marian says, her voice sliding up an octave in shock. Jowan won't look at her. He doesn't look at all well, now that she really looks at him; he's got huge dark circles under his eyes, his right hand is swollen, and he's not moving well. 

She grinds her teeth until it hurts. She and Isolde are going to have _words_. She's furious with Jowan but that doesn't mean she'll just let torture slide.

"But, Jowan, why did you _do_ it?" Marian asks, lost. Eamon is nothing to him, so far as she knows, and it just doesn't make sense that he would come to Redcliffe and poison someone. 

"Teryn Loghain promised to make things right with the Circle," he says, low and dull, turning away to pace a little in the confines of his cell. "He said the arl was a threat to Ferelden, that he needed to be dealt with."

"Loghain?" Marian repeats in disbelief. For some reason, this is the action of Loghain's that she can't understand. It's possible that he pulled out of Ostagar because they really were overwhelmed. It's possible that he blames the Grey Wardens – she and Alistair had missed the signal entirely and lit the beacon without checking the course of the battle. She'd wondered, in her darker moments, whether they were the reasons for Loghain's withdrawal. The bounty on their heads is almost reasonable, in that light. Berwick, the spy in Redcliffe's tavern, is not so easily explained, but it's not out of the question that Loghain is looking for Alistair in his home town.

But _this_? Arl Eamon is a hero, famous for fighting in the Orlesian wars, and for his sister, Queen Moira. He and Loghain are peers. To send Jowan here, Loghain would need a very good reason.

None of it makes any _sense_. She feels like she's missing the exact piece of the puzzle that would cause it to come into focus.

It's not likely that Jowan has that information, though. 

Marian tilts her head, watching Jowan, who is slumped against the far wall and watching her in turn. 

"I just wanted to come back," he says quietly. "This world out here, I don't understand it. And I missed you." Jowan tips his head back, letting it hit the wall and baring his throat. He sighs. "He abandoned me here, didn't he? Maker, I've made so many mistakes, disappointed so many people..." 

His head comes back up; he pushes off the wall and catches himself in the act of reaching for her. "I never thought it would end like this," he says; he sounds so rough, stripped down to the bare, basic truth, to sorrow and regret. "I wish I could go back and fix it. I just want to make everything _right_ again."

Marian laughs bitterly. "With blood magic?"

She almost regrets it when Jowan deflates, his shoulders rounding. He doesn't seem to know what to do with his hands, and every time he moves the right one, he winces. "I know," he says. "I dabbled... it seemed the only way for us to escape, the only way to avoid being made tranquil." Even now, that word brings shadows to his eyes. She understands those shadows all too well. 

"All right," Marian says slowly, feeling it out as she goes. "Let's say I believe you. Why did Loghain hire you and not someone else?" _Someone who actually knows what they're doing_ , she thinks but does not say. 

"Arl Eamon and Lady Isolde have a son," Jowan says. "His name is Connor. He'd started to show the signs." He pauses meaningfully, watching Marian, and she nods. He must mean that Connor had started to spark. "Lady Isolde was terrified that the Circle of Magi would take him away for training."

"Connor's a mage? I can't believe it!" Alistair exclaims from just beside her. Her companions have been so quiet and so still during the conversation that she'd actually forgotten they were there, and the start that his words gives her is so great that she twitches away from him. Her heart is beating loud and quickly in her skull, and it takes a few breaths for it to fade away.

When she has her heart under control, Marian answers Alistair without looking over. "It's not uncommon. We still don't know what causes mages in the first place. It can be passed down, but there are many cases where there's no magical history in the family, or it's been many generations since the last mage."

"Isolde wanted an apostate, someone outside the Circle, to teach her son in secret so he could hide his talent," Jowan says, and laughs sharply when Marian covers her face with her hands in despair, swearing silently and viciously. "You're as quick as ever."

"What?" Alistair asks, looking from him to her. "Did I miss something?"

"As always," Morrigan says. She is leaning on the wall next to Jowan's door, and she is smirking. Alistair sneers in return, and she laughs. "A child learning his first magic is at great risk," she says. "With a little knowledge come many dangers, of which demons are only the best-known."

"Indeed," Jowan says, coming to the door and looking out at Morrigan, considering. "I hadn't got to much magic – he could barely cast a simple spell – but he could have inadvertently done something to tear open the Veil. Powerful spirits could definitely be responsible for all of _this_." He indicates the whole castle with a wave of his hand.

A tear in the Veil is not something to take lightly, nor is it something Marian can handle on her own. 

"I'm such a fool," Jowan says bitterly, taking the bars in his hands again and gripping them tightly. "Arl Eamon's a good man. I wondered how he could be the threat Loghain said he was, but..." He trails off, shakes his head. "But I killed him anyway."

Marian turns it over in her mind, but in the end, she knows she can't keep this from him. "He's not dead. Not yet."

"Oh," Jowan says quietly, a relieved breath given sound. "Maker, Marian, you don't know what a relief that is."

She has an idea, though. 

When he looks up, he's more the friend she knew than ever, determined and desperate both. "Help me fix this," he pleads. "I don't deserve your help, or your friendship, but we were friends once. If that ever meant anything – "

"I helped you once," Marian snarls. "Fool me twice."

"I know," Jowan says, guilty again. "Believe me, I can't stop thinking about it – about what I did to you, and I'm so, so _sorry_ , Marian. I could apologize for the rest of my life and it wouldn't be enough." He takes a deep breath. "But you're not the only one I've hurt. Shouldn't I try to fix what I've broken?"

"He wishes to redeem himself," Leliana says gently. Marian turns around, to where she's standing against the other wall. There's something secret in her eyes. It reminds her that she doesn't know anything at all about the people she's traveling with, the people to whom she's entrusting her life. "Doesn't everyone deserve that chance?"

Sten frowns and crosses his arms across his chest. "Kill the mage. He cannot be trusted."

"I say this boy could still be of use to us," Morrigan puts in. "But if not, let him go. What use is he dead or imprisoned?"

Marian looks over at Alistair, who shakes his head. "He's your friend," he says, and she knows that he is as torn as she is, though surely not for the same reasons. "You know him best. It's your decision."

She turns around again and takes a long, long look at Jowan, at his familiar features and lanky, greasy hair, which tells her how long it's been since he had a proper bath; at his swollen right hand, at the Circle robes he wears as if he's a perfect right to them, at his slumped, rounded shoulders and terrible posture from reading too long into the night, bent over spellbooks with her.

"Leliana, can you open the door?" Marian asks, backing away to let her in.

Jowan frowns. "You're letting me out?"

"I am," Marian says, locking down her heart, two sizes too big and twice as likely to get her into trouble. Leliana picks the old lock quickly and swings open the cell door. She waits until Jowan nods and steps into the hallway, and then she points down the tunnel to the stairway and the mill. "And now I'm telling you to go." 

Jowan stares at her. She drops her hand and sighs. "I mean it, Jowan. Run. Now."

"I can help," he pleads.

"I said _go_ ," Marian shouts, her sudden volume startling even to her. "Get out. I never want to see you again and if I do, I'll kill you."

Jowan backs away, his hands spread, but he pauses there before he bumps into Morrigan behind him. He searches her face, like maybe she's just teasing, or maybe she'll change her mind.

Joke's on him, then.

"Are you really suggesting just letting him go?" Alistair says dubiously in her ear. "He's a blood mage."

"I can't kill him," Marian replies, though she doesn't turn; she's speaking to Jowan as much as she is to Alistair. "I'm not leaving him down here for demon target practice, either, but I don't trust him at my back or by my side." Every word hammers at Jowan; he outright flinches when she says she doesn't trust him. 

It's only the truth, but she knows that the truth can be the most dangerous weapon of all.

Alistair wordlessly murmurs assent and just like that, the stalemate is broken. 

"I'll go, then," Jowan says, dropping his hands. "Marian..." She turns her head away; it's childish, but she doesn't care. Jowan sighs. "I'm sorry things ended this way. I hope I see you again one day. Under better circumstances." He turns and slowly starts down the tunnel, and she very carefully turns in the opposite direction and keeps her eyes fixed on the ground ahead of her. 

It's time to move on.


	18. The Child

They sweep the rest of the dungeons, fighting skeletons left and right. Marian's going to have nightmares, she just knows it.

"I locked myself in a cage once when I was a child, for an entire day," Alistair says wistfully after they put down a veritable pack of the things, glancing at a pair of hanging cages nearby. "Good times."

Marian's not sure if she's meant to be horrified or not, but when she stares at him, Alistair brushes off her concern with a laugh and something about being raised by dogs.

She tucks that away to ask him again later, when he knows her better, when he realizes that she's like a bloodhound: once she's hooked she doesn't let things go.

There's another staircase to a different floor, leading into the castle proper. She'd had an idea that perhaps the undead were confined to the ground floors, that there might be people somewhere holding out against the tide, but every room is littered with undead, and in one of the main halls a pack of weak shade demons nearly overwhelms them.

It's their first taste of demons. None of them are enjoying themselves.

Their path is easier once they get into the smaller rooms, where they can take advantage of close quarters and set up choke points, funneling their enemies into Marian and Morrigan's magic and Leliana's arrows.

That works until they stumble into the mabari kennel. They're not in their cages, they're loose, and as soon as Marian steps foot into the room, they start to growl in a way Marian knows is deadly serious instead of warning. She darts a panicked glance at Alistair, who is already bringing his shield around, and Cú, who is growling in her defense – but she doesn't want to fight this fight, she realizes, and silently waves her companions back.

She creeps backward, never taking her eyes off the mabaris, and the volume of their growling decreases with each foot she moves, until she's back through the doorway and in the hall.

Marian rubs her forehead and sighs. "Thank the Maker," she says in low tones. "I really didn't want to hurt them."

Leliana touches her shoulder, a small comfort, and they move on.

They fight for every step down the hall – there really are skeletons _everywhere_ – until they reach the end. The smith's daughter is hiding behind crates in the last room, and she's easily persuaded to flee down the passage down to the village.

It continues in this way, with each step bringing more and more undead, until they reach a side entrance to the courtyard and they can spread out.  
 _  
It's too quiet_ , Marian thinks, looking around. Even with what she knows about the fate of the people who live here, there should be nature sounds, birds, insects, the bloody wind. The air here is dead, and still, and the tiny hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stand right up.

"'Ware," Alistair murmurs, holding his shield tightly.

Marian nods, and they fan out a little, looking for traps, surprises, anything that might explain why they're all so uneasy. Leliana is the first to spot the mechanism that opens the portcullis out to the bridge path, and she slips over to pull the lever. Marian hopes Ser Perth is paying attention.

Suddenly she feels... wrong. Not just uneasy, the way she had before, but like someone's got their fist around her spine, around her guts, and they're squeezing for all they're worth. She drags in a harsh, shuddering breath –

That fist _pulls_. Her feet leave the ground, and she flies, choking on her own breath, until she slams into something as unyielding and harsh as a wall and lands face-first on the ground. 

She can't catch her breath. 

Someone shouts her name, though she will never know who; she groans in reply, then cries out when an armored boot stomps down hard on her staff hand. She pulls as hard as she dares, but her attacker is putting all its weight on her hand, the small bones grinding against each other, and it _hurts_ – Marian sucks her breath in, arching her back and pulls her chest in hard, creating tension and a small amount of space. Then she drags her other arm across, between her chest and the ground, and blind-casts a wave of pure force over her own shoulder.

Abruptly the pressure on her hand is gone, and she rolls away from the thing, clutching her abused hand to her chest. She has just enough presence of mind to keep rolling a little ways away, because that little bump won't put her attacker off for long.

Her hand is empty. She left her staff behind.

She needs to get up.

Marian rolls over one more time onto her front and uses her right elbow and uninjured left hand to push herself to her hands and knees, and from there she can get up without knocking her hand around more than she can bear. A persistent, throbbing ache is making itself known in her ribcage, but she puts that from her mind as best she can. She turns, and for the first time she confronts the thing that attacked her.

A skeletal face grins at her underneath a wicked, curving helmet, and the red eyes – _revenant_ , her mind whispers. _Oh Maker – blessed are they who stand –_

Her darling, perfect mabari stands between her and the revenant, every muscle tensed to spring, showing every fang in her defense. A glance around tells her that the knights have indeed come to their aid; they're holding off a group of the undead on the grand staircase while Leliana supports them with her bow. Morrigan, Alistair, and Sten are bogged down in another group behind her.

Marian and Cú are on their own, it seems.

First things first, then: her staff. She has one idea, and it's a terrible plan and she's a terrible person for thinking of it, but...

"Come _by_ ," Marian shouts, and Cú begins to circle left around the thing, still growling, but he distracts it long enough for Marian to dash forward and snatch her staff out of the grass. She immediately switches hands, cursing herself for forgetting her injury, and renews her shield and armor spells.  
 _  
All right, then_.

She skips backward a few steps and opens up with lightning, then flame. The revenant turns away from Cú, snarling at her from under its helmet, and that's when she signals Cú to attack. It turns around again, frustrated, and stabs at Cú, who dodges at the last second and then lunges at the revenant's arm, biting down for all he's worth.

With Cú attached, she's forced to fall back on frost and arcane bolts, which she throws as fast as she can. It shakes her mabari off too quickly for her taste and comes spinning at her with a sword as big as she is. She stumbles backward, hoping desperately that there's nothing behind her to trip over, and tries the force wave again, which knocks it back several steps. Cú takes the opportunity to lunge for the hamstring, and Marian winces as his teeth clash horribly on the revenant's armored boots; but it stops going for her and turns back to swipe at Cú yet again.

An arrow flies by her ear and buries itself under the edge of the revenant's helmet; Leliana has joined the battle, and that means that the knights probably aren't far behind. Marian slaps a force field around the revenant and takes a precious second to glance over her shoulder at her other party members. No one is dying on the ground, but Sten is losing blood at an incredible rate and can hardly raise his greatsword. She flings a heal at him and turns around in time for the revenant to come unstuck. It sneers at her, stabbing its sword into the ground and reaching out an impossibly long arm for her. Again she can feel that bloody weird feeling of someone holding her insides in their hand –

"Warden!" Ser Perth is there, and she nearly sobs in relief as he wades in and takes on the revenant in her stead. The feeling is slow to dissipate, but she fights through it as two more of Perth's men arrive to help, and when Morrigan pitches in, the fight is soon over.

Leliana joins her, watching in concern as Marian tries to fumble one of the potions out of her belt. "May I?" Leliana asks, and suits action to words before Marian can agree. She pulls out the tiny stopper before handing the healing potion to Marian, who tosses it back. Instantly her ribs stop aching and her hand feels better. She thanks Leliana; then it's only the work of a moment to heal the rest of the damage to her hand with a spell, and another to heal the wounded among them – she's already done the bulk of it mid-battle, healing Sten.

Marian turns to find Cú lifting his leg against the gorgeous old tree on the other side of the courtyard. She narrows her eyes. " _Bad dog_ ," she scolds when he comes trotting back to her, though she doesn't mean a word of it and he knows it. He sits, tongue lolling from his mouth, as she carefully checks him for injury. She touches her forehead to his for a moment, smiling. " _Good_ dog," she murmurs, and stands.

They head through the castle's main doors and after a moment's thought, Alistair points out the way to the main hall.

The _last_ thing she's expecting is to find Teagan playing the fool for a young boy, who must be Connor. Teagan rolls around, turning at least one somersault before he leaps to his feet and sketches a bow. Connor is clapping. It all seems very normal. _Perhaps that's what's wrong with it_ , she thinks. Where are the undead? Why are there guards here, instead of protecting the doors? Teagan might want to amuse his nephew, if Isolde was right and Connor was turning strange, but Isolde herself looks terrified, her body language tight and skittish.

The boy looks up as she approaches. His eyes narrow on her face. "So these are our visitors? The ones you told me about, Mother?"

That's the first shock. Connor's voice is artificially deep, far too old for a boy of ten and nearly too deep for anyone to physically produce. Marian frowns.

Isolde swallows. "Yes, Connor."  
 _  
Why is she treating him like he'll hurt her if she looks at him the wrong way?_

Marian surreptitiously flexes her right hand to make sure it's fully healed and ready to cast. Something is very wrong here. She has an idea of what it might be, and she really, really wants to be wrong. _Please, Maker, let me be wrong_.

"The one who defeated my soldiers? The ones I sent to reclaim my village?"

"Yes," Isolde answers again. She looks at Marian, her eyes pleading. Marian holds her gaze for a moment and then dismisses her, turning back to Connor.

"And now it's staring at me." Connor sneers, narrowing his eyes and subjecting her to the most thorough up-and-down Marian's ever experienced. "What is it, Mother?"

Isolde hesitates, looking lost. "This is a woman, Connor. Just as I am."

Connor snorts dismissively. "This woman is nothing at all like you. Just look at her: half your age, and pretty, too. I'm surprised you don't order her executed."

Marian is content to allow this little shadow play to run its course. It gives her time to think of an alternative to what she knows must happen. It also wouldn't be a terrible thing if she can discover what kind of demon holds Connor in its thrall.

Isolde gives up on her and turns to Connor, her hands fluttering around him, but she clearly doesn't dare touch. "Connor, I beg you," she pleads. "Don't hurt anyone."

Connor very slowly folds in half, covering his face in his hands.  
 _  
That's an odd thing to do_ , Marian thinks, her brows drawn together.

When he comes back up, there's real emotion on his face, terror, confusion; his eyes are soft and scared. "Mother? Wh-what's happening? Where am I?" His voice is truly child-like now, not that hideous thing from the depths. Is it a trick?

"Connor!" With a shaky, relieved laugh, Isolde drops to her knees, takes his shoulders and holds him there. "Thank the Maker – Connor, can you hear me?"

He opens his mouth, but then – he shakes his head, looking around as if he's lost. Connor shoves away from Isolde, slapping her hands aside. "Get away from me, fool woman!" He sneers at her and turns away, but not before he glances at her one last time – and it's not cruelty on his face, or that mocking jubilation that's so unsuited to a child, but genuine confusion.  
 _  
Maybe it's not too late_.

"Warden, please," Isolde begs. "Please, don't hurt my son. He's not responsible for this, for _any_ of this."

Marian crosses her arms over her chest. She's no reason to love Isolde, or give her the benefit of the doubt, or believe a word that she says at this point. "I take it this is what you were hiding?" she asks, raising her brows.

"Connor didn't mean to do this. It was that mage, the one who poisoned Eamon – he started all this! He summoned this demon. Connor was just trying to help his father!"

"I spoke to that mage," Marian says, watching Isolde's face. "He said that he summoned no demon."

"The boy must have made a deal. Foolish child," Morrigan says.

"It was a fair deal!" Connor shouts. Isolde can't scramble to her feet fast enough, and she takes two steps back. Marian lets her arms fall, sliding her hand over her hip in what she hopes looks like an idle motion that really puts her hand in striking range of her staff. "Father is alive, just as I wanted," Connor goes on, his voice more unearthly than ever. His eyes are fever-bright in the light of the great fire behind him. His lips curve. "Now it's my turn to sit on the throne and send out armies to conquer the world. Nobody tells me what to do anymore!"

" _Nobody_ tells him what to do!" Teagan breaks in with an insane cackle, and then keeps laughing even as Connor turns on him with vicious words and a threatening fist. Teagan quiets then, and Connor turns back to Marian, but Teagan keeps chortling under his breath.

She's really worried for him now. Earlier was... different, but this? This is blood magic.

"Let's keep things civil," Connor says, a gleam in his eye as he watches her watching Teagan. "Warden, was it? Why are you here, Warden?"

Marian shrugs, deliberately nonchalant. "Nothing you can help me with."

"Oh, _my_ ," Connor says, mocking her; the echoes in his voice are out of control, wavering with each word. She's not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. She'd been trying to provoke him, but... "How rude! What shall I do, Mother?"

Isolde swallows. "I – I don't think – "

Connor scoffs, cutting her off. "Of course you don't. Ever since you sent the knights away, you do nothing but deprive me of my fun. Frankly, it's getting _dull_." He comes down the shallow steps to the rest of the hall, glaring at Marian every step of the way. "This woman spoiled my sport by saving that stupid village, and now she'll repay me."

As one, the soldiers standing guard turn their heads to look at Marian. So does Teagan.

Oh, _shit –_

Connor dashes to a side door and slips out, leaving Marian and her companions facing Teagan and six bewitched soldiers who want to take their heads while Isolde flattens herself along the wall.

She calls the order to disable only even as she's whisking her staff out from behind her back, and while it takes longer than she'd like, they eventually manage without more than a long wound on Cú's side that Marian heals quickly.

She leaves Alistair and Leliana to tie up the guards and instead bends over Teagan. He's got a fractured skull from the butt of Sten's sword, but otherwise he's all right, and a healing spell or a potion will take care of that quickly. On the other hand, she's not sure if she should wake him up. He might still be enthralled, and she has no way of protecting or curing him except killing the abomination. Killing _Connor_.

The decision is taken out of her hands when Teagan groans. He's coming around.

"Teagan!" Isolde kneels on his other side, patting his cheek. "Teagan, are you all right?"

Teagan rubs his eyes. "I... " He opens his eyes with a sigh. "I am better now, I think. My mind is my own again."

Marian offers him a hand, and when he doesn't immediately slit her throat she allows herself to relax. A little. He takes her hand and levers himself up, with Isolde helping on his other side, and when he gains his feet Marian heals his cracked skull.

"I would never have forgiven myself had you died," Isolde tells him, tears in her voice. "What a fool I am!"  
 _  
No one is arguing_.

It's hard work keeping that behind her teeth.

Isolde turns to her, her eyes slightly wild. "Connor's not responsible for this. There must be some way we can save him!"

"Haven't you done enough?" It explodes out of her, and she's ashamed of the delivery, if not the content, but it keeps pouring out of her, like a well overrun. She can't stop, or maybe it's that she doesn't want to. "All these people – they're dead now, because of _you. You_ tortured Jowan when he had nothing to do with the demon, the one living in your own son. You lied to us out on the bluff to get Bann Teagan in here, where a demon _took over his mind with blood magic_ , and now you want us to save your son?" Marian laughs scornfully. "Your son, who's an abomination, who we should kill on sight? And you know what the worst part is?" She plows on, ignoring Isolde's pale, white face, Teagan's hand on her arm, Alistair's worried breath on the back of her neck. "The worst part is that we're going to save him anyway, because I _refuse_ to kill a child – "

" _Marian._ " Alistair pulls her around by the arm and gives her a little shake. His face is a priceless picture of baffled shock. Her temper drains right away, leaving only shame behind. _Sorry_ , she mouths at him, to which he shakes his head, dismissing her apology, and lets go of her arm.

She takes a breath, and then turns around to face Teagan and Isolde. Teagan just watches her, his face entirely neutral, but Isolde clearly doesn't know whether to reproach Marian or allow herself to hope.

"I apologize for my outburst," Marian says, careful but sincere. "It was inappropriate, and poorly done of me."

To her surprise, Isolde waves it off, dismissing her apology. "We can discuss that later, if necessary," she says impatiently. "How may we save Connor?"

Marian takes a breath to think about how to phrase what she wants to say. "Connor _is_ an abomination," she says, picking her words. "But the demon is not inside him. If it were, Connor would not have been able to resurface. Therefore, its true form is in the Fade; therefore, there is a link between your son and the demon, a link we can use to find it. And to kill it."

"How can this be done?" Teagan asks with furrowed brow.

"It would require a great deal of lyrium," Morrigan puts in. "And more mages than we who are here." Marian knows she's not imagining the stress in that sentence, which might as well be screaming _I told you so_. Morrigan still thinks they shouldn't have let Jowan go. It's too late to call him back, though, and she wouldn't in any case; and with that she dismisses it from her mind.

"You can find lyrium and more mages at the Circle of Magi – if they would even do it," Alistair says doubtfully. While she wasn't looking he'd come around her to join in the conversation, and she wonders again why he wants her to do most of the talking.

"We have to go there anyway," Marian points out.

"That is an excellent point," Alistair allows, sounding almost hopeful. "And it's not far from here, as the crow flies."

"No, only a day's journey across the lake," Teagan says.

"But what will happen here?" Isolde glances over her shoulder at the side door Connor escaped through. When she turns back her face is serene, but her hands are gripping each other so tightly that her knuckles stand white. "Connor will not remain passive forever."

"I'll leave one of my party here," Marian promises, looking over her shoulder at Morrigan, who glares at her almost as if she can read Marian's mind. "I'm afraid that's the best I can do."

"Then we have a plan?" Teagan asks with a slight smile.

Marian nods. "It certainly sounds like one."

She arranges for them to stay the night, and for supplies, and a guide whom Teagan says will cut nearly two days off their trip. They will have to help clear the rest of the castle, but tonight they will sleep in real beds, and eat food Alistair hasn't turned to mush over the campfire, and if she is very lucky, there might even be a bath.

Marian sighs wistfully and turns to finish clearing the main floor of yet more undead. _Delightful_.


	19. The Amulet

It doesn't take long to sweep two floors of the castle, and by then Teagan has begged, borrowed, and bribed as many villagers as he can into helping with the clean-up. They're assigned the bedrooms in the guest wing. Marian dismisses her companions with strict instructions to take a nap, which is an order she does not intend to follow herself. Her dreams will be bad enough tonight. She has no wish to confront them just yet.

She takes herself down to the village to get out of the way of the great cleaning, and while she's there she checks on the smith and his daughter – there are hugs, which Marian's not sure she's comfortable with – and drops by the tavern to find out if she can buy clothing that's not covered in undead.

She finds that she can, and leaves five sovereigns and three silvers lighter; Bella has promised to leave, but not before coming up to the castle to help with dinner.

Marian's starting to think she shouldn't be entrusted with the purse. Apparently she's a light touch.

The village is quiet now with so many people in the castle, but the bodies have been moved down to the lake and the barricades cleared away. She takes her time poking around the village, examining the dry dock and the abandoned general store with interest. She has to promise herself a good look through Arl Eamon's library in exchange for passing on the Chantry's collection of religious texts, and then collects the things they'd left on the dock to take back with her.

Weighed down with all the tents and spare armor, it's a bit of a struggle to get back up the path to the cliff, but she just manages it and stops at the top for a breather. Waiting for her there is Morrigan.

"Warden," Morrigan says in a cool greeting. "I believe I made you a promise."

" _Now_?" Marian asks, aghast. She is exhausted, mentally and physically, and for the first time in her life she'd rather have a bath instead of a lesson.

"We will not have another opportunity for some time. It is your intent to station me here to watch over the abomination, is it not?" Morrigan pins her with those cool golden eyes.

It's difficult to read Morrigan at the best of times, but she's not exactly being subtle right now.

"You don't actually  _want_ to go to the Circle, do you?" Marian asks skeptically. She drops the rest of the packs in a heap. "I'm a Warden, and I'm still not entirely sure they're not going to try to lock me away again."

"I have no desire to go there," Morrigan says, clearly irritated. "But I..." She trails off and looks away, mulling something over. When she looks back, she's clearly made some kind of decision.

"We have an opportunity that I believe we should take advantage of," she says, coming closer. "My mother was once divested of a particular grimoire by a most annoying templar hunter. It occurred long before I was born, but even today Flemeth speaks of the loss with great rage. With the Circle of Magi in such disarray, it occurs to me that this might be the perfect time to recover the tome from their possession, for surely it eventually ended up in their hands."

"You want me to steal a book from the Circle?" Marian asks, baffled.

Morrigan tilts her head. "You take issue with the idea?"

Marian laughs. "No, actually," she admits. "I just wasn't expecting that." She shrugs. "I'm happy to keep an eye out."

"Good," Morrigan says, almost... relaxing? It looks strange on her, whatever the case, and it makes Marian wonder how much of her off-putting personality is just uncertainty. It's an odd thought to have about someone who seems so sure of herself all the time, but it's worth turning over later. "The grimoire is leather-bound and adorned with the symbol of a leafless tree. I am most interested to see its contents, should it be located."

"Well, I'll see what I can do," Marian says, stretching a little. She's come back around to the idea of learning, now that she's caught her breath. "Shall we?"

It takes far less time than she expected. In fact, the longest part of it is finding an animal she can practice with; eventually they find a robin in one of the trees around the edges, eyeing them beadily from an upper branch.

Then Morrigan instructs her in the best method of  _copying its soul_.

"Um," Marian says.

Morrigan sighs. "You will not harm the creature," she says impatiently. "You are not interfering with it in any way. You are simply holding an impression of its soul at the top of your mind."

"You're sure?" Marian asks doubtfully. This magic is beyond her. She can vaguely see where it might intersect with some of her wilder theories, but that's not helping her here.

"I am certain of what I say, otherwise I would not say it." It sounds like Morrigan's grinding her teeth.

Marian shuts up and copies. This is the oddest thing she's ever done, and she can still say that after the Joining and the night of undead.

The robin nestles down into a part of her mind she'd never noticed before. Morrigan shows her how to take it out, to pull it over her like a blanket, to wrap it around herself and hold it with her magic until –

Her body twists in a new direction, more felt than seen, and folds itself into a new shape directed by her will alone. When she opens her eyes, her vision is oddly split, for now her eyes are on either side of a head shaped quite differently than her own. She laughs, delighted, and it pours out of her in birdsong.

"Flying is quite another matter," Morrigan says when Marian has taken her true form again. "Allow the bird to show you the way."

Marian's going to have  _so much fun_.

\---

Morrigan helps her lug the packs the rest of the way and then disappears soon after. It's apparent that she has no intention of hanging around the rest of them more than she can help, and that's fine with Marian. Perhaps it'll help with the sniping battles between Morrigan and Alistair, the ones that give her headaches.

Probably not, but she's okay with feeble hopes.

She drops off the bags – Cú is draped snoring over Leliana's feet, which is oddly adorable – and descends to the kitchens, which she judges is the best bet of her getting a tub and the water to fill it.

The servants are so busy that she has to warm it herself, but that's fine with her. In fact, it's  _heavenly_. She nearly drops off in the bath, but after the first startled jerk of her head, she sighs and reluctantly climbs out. She leaves her hair down to dry on its own and dresses quickly in her new clothing. She's promised herself a look at Arl Eamon's library, and with hours to go until she needs to be anywhere, now's the perfect time.

Fortunately, the door to the arl's study isn't far from the stairway to the guest quarters, so Marian slips through the main floor without running into anyone. She shuts the door part-way to hide the candlelight and takes a long, deep, delighted breath.

She loves the smell of books.

The arl has a beautiful collection; of course, it isn't a patch on the Circle's library, but that had been dedicated to one subject: magic. Who knows what the arl reads? Looking around at the very traditional leather and wood furniture, she's betting on histories, religious tracts, and agricultural treatises.

Even that sounds like the most perfect kind of bliss.

Marian reads for hours before the ache in her back drives her out of Eamon's chair, and she looks around while she twists her hair up in a knot. She's only gone through one shelf, and there are five more she hasn't even looked at yet. They seem to be sorted by subject, and she was right about the agricultural books – they start by the door, and appear to be well-thumbed. They blend into nature books, and strangely, one entirely on identifying species of birds. Then there's a section on mills and water wheels, dwarven metalsmithing, swordmaking. And that's just the second shelf.

Oh, she could spend  _days_  here.

"So here's where you wandered off to," Alistair says from the doorway, and she gasps and jumps a mile.

She spins on her heel and glares at him, but that doesn't stop him from smirking. " _Must_  you?" she demands. Marian looks him up and down; it's so strange to see him out of armor. She wonders if she looks as strange as he does in shirtsleeves and soft pants. And bare feet. He has shockingly nice feet, actually. She frowns at them. "How do you do that, anyway? Someone as big as you shouldn't be able to sneak up on me all the time."

Alistair opens the door a little wider so he can come in and closes it behind him. "I wouldn't be much use if the darkspawn could hear me coming, could they?"

"Could have fooled me," Marian says, raising her brows. "You  _are_  the one who announces your presence by shouting a challenge at every darkspawn you can find, aren't you?"

"Guilty," Alistair says, laughing. "What can I say? I like the attention."

" _Eurgh_ ," Marian says with as much disgust as she can manage, just to make him laugh again.

"So..." He trails off, looking at her intently.

She's not sure what he's looking for, but there's something she wanted to talk to him about, and this seems as good a time as any. Marian turns slightly, just so she's not quite looking at him, and then thinks better of it and starts to wander along the bookcases, trailing her fingers along the shelves. "I wanted to apologize," she says. "For shouting at Isolde. I lost my temper, and it was wrong of me." She looks at him over her shoulder. "And I wanted to thank you for stopping me. So. I'm sorry, and thank you." She hopes Alistair realizes exactly how much she means that.

"I know we haven't known each other very long," he says slowly, picking his words. "But you don't normally get angry like that." He frowns. "Or do you?"

"No!" Marian turns back to him and steps closer, anxious to dispel at least that. "No, I don't usually. I..." She sighs. "It's been a long day. And, well, you may have noticed that I didn't like the Circle very much. The idea of having to go back there... I'd promised myself I wouldn't go back, that's all."

There'd been more to it than that, of course, but she doesn't want to talk about it. She's done enough of that already.

"It'll be fine," Alistair says with a reassuring smile. "I promise. We'll stick our heads in, ask them for a sack of lyrium, and come back. What could go wrong?"

Marian stares at him balefully. "Well, now it's  _guaranteed_  to go wrong. Good job."

"Oops," he says, laughing. "Our luck does seem to run that way, doesn't it?"

She groans. "I hate that you're not kidding," she says. She retreats a little, leaning back on the desk and folding her arms. She looks him up and down again.

Marian's not used to Alistair without his armor on. If she'd thought about it at all, she would have said he should look smaller without the bulk of plate and leather and underpadding, but contrary to expectations he looks even bigger without his armor, even taller, more powerful, with long, thick muscles visible where he's got his sleeves rolled up on his forearms.

Not that she'd thought about it, of course.

Alistair shifts his weight from foot to foot, looking incredibly uncomfortable. "Listen, there was something I wanted to talk to you about, too," he says. "I know I've let you do all the decision-making since – since Ostagar." He sighs. "I'm sorry. I know it's not fair, but... I prefer to follow. I always have. Bad things happen when I lead." He laughs with no humor in it. "We get lost, people die, and the next thing you know I'm stranded somewhere without any pants."

It's meant to be a joke, but it's not. There's something wrong there. If she thought she could get it out of him she'd pry, but their friendship isn't strong enough for her to dig that way. Not yet.

"It's all right," Marian says carefully. "I know you were... upset."

He laughs, but it's bitter and leaves a bad taste in her mouth. "You're being kind, and I don't deserve it. I shouldn't have lost it that way."

"The way I remember it, we took turns losing it," Marian says, looking at him steadily until he glances away. She takes that as acknowledgement. "And it's not that I mind making the decisions..." Marian shrugs, a little uncomfortable with this. She doesn't know what he's looking for: reassurance? Confidence? Is it something she can give him? "It's just – I've never led anything bigger than a snack raid on the larder. I don't know if I'm doing it right either."

"You are," Alistair says, startled. "Why would you – " He shakes his head. "Never mind. You're doing fine."

"Just promise me that you'll let me know when I screw up."

Alistair raises his eyebrow. "Don't you mean  _if_  you screw up?"

It's her turn to laugh without meaning it. "I really don't."

Alistair offers his hand for a handshake. "Deal," he says firmly. "As long as you promise to yank me up short if I let you down again."

Marian can agree to those terms. She shakes on it; his hand is huge, swallowing hers, and warm to boot.

Perhaps the silence that follows should feel awkward, but it doesn't. She watches him wander the shelves, looking at titles in an idle sort of appraisal.

Marian pushes herself up onto the desk to sit cross-legged. Alistair seems content to wander quietly, but her mind is turning over their conversation, and she thinks she knows a way to restart it. She takes a silent, steadying breath. "Do you want to talk about Duncan?" The question is as gentle as she knows how to make it.

Alistair pauses in his circuit, but he doesn't turn. The broad muscles in his back tense. "You don't have to do that," he says softly. "I know you didn't know him as long as I did."

"So?" Marian says. "That doesn't mean I don't mourn him. Not the way you do, but..." She looks away, grasping for the right words. "Sometimes talking about things makes them easier to bear."

Oh, she is a  _hypocrite_ who will drift forever in the Void, for she has no way of telling him the whys and wherefores of her own silence without exposing something she'd rather keep to herself. But then Alistair turns back to her and smiles, just a little curve of his mouth, and out pours a story about that lost little boy and the Grey Warden hero who rescued him from the clutches of the Chantry. Then he tells her all about the Grey Wardens and the men he'd been mourning while she ignored him and Morrigan twitted him the entire way to Lothering.

She is a  _terrible person_.

He'd mentioned his templar training when he talked about Duncan, and she asks him about that instead of making another awkward apology. Maybe she's also trying to remind herself of something she seems to have forgotten; she hasn't thought of Alistair as a templar in  _weeks_ , mostly because he stubbornly refuses to act like one, and it's throwing her off.

Marian expects him to talk about mage-hunting, about phylacteries, about ways to kill. Instead he talks about discipline and studying and learning, about abilities, and the awful way he'd felt about the one Harrowing he'd attended. No templar talks like that, and he's been nothing but kind, supportive, and friendly, even now after what he heard when she talked to Jowan, and after she let him go.

Maybe it's time to let herself trust.

Even the knowledge that he'd killed or helped kill a mage in their Harrowing doesn't change that. She'd thanked Ser Cullen for being there, and for being willing to strike the killing blow if the worst had happened, and she'd meant it. Nothing could be worse than some  _thing_ wearing her face. Nothing. The idea that Alistair knows what to do in case the worst happens is more of a comfort than anything else.

And maybe she can talk Alistair into showing her some of those mental techniques. Her mind could always use a little more discipline.

And then Alistair tells her, so nonchalantly that she can't believe her ears, that every templar is purposely addicted to lyrium by the very Chantry they believe in, the same Chantry that controls every drop of lyrium in Thedas from the moment it reaches the surface.

"Are  _you_  addicted?" bursts from her mouth, after which she covers her mouth with her hands, watching him with huge eyes. Her mind races – she's never seen him taking anything, and he hadn't had anything lyrium-shaped in his packs after Ostagar, but she's not sure she would recognize it on sight.

"No, no," he says, waving her worries away. "You only start receiving lyrium once you've taken your vows, and Duncan recruited me before that happened."

"Maker's  _breath_  – I can't believe they would do that!" Marian says, her voice rising in distress. "How can they think that's acceptable?"

"Well, they do. They feel perfectly justified," Alistair says, shrugging. "You don't need it to learn the templar talents, it just makes them more effective. Or so I was told." He shrugs again. She can't believe he's not more upset about this... but he's had a lot more time to think about it than she has. "Maybe it doesn't even do that."

"But you can still do smites and things, right?" Marian demands. "Clearly you  _don't_  need it."

Alistair scratches the back of his neck. "I haven't done much since I left, just enough to keep in practice," he says thoughtfully. "Duncan thought my abilities might be useful for when we encountered darkspawn magic, so I kept it up, but... maybe I'll work harder on it."

"Just don't use me for target practice, please," Marian says, forcing her voice into lighter tones and dropping her hands into her lap where she can hide her clenched fists. The idea that he might have been addicted to lyrium is unbearable, but she doesn't need to let him see that.

What is  _wrong_  with her?

Alistair laughs. "Why would I do that, when Morrigan is right there?" He slides a sly grin her way, and she can't help the laugh that follows, a real one.

"If you spent half as much time playing nice with her as you do thinking up things to poke at her with..." Marian starts, pretending to scold, and then reconsiders the idea. She shakes her head. "No, you'd still hate each other, wouldn't you?"

"I do not!" he says indignantly, but there's a laugh hovering behind his eyes and in the corner of his mouth, in the way he presses his lips together as if to hold it in.

" _So, Morrigan, let's talk about your mother for a moment_ ," Marian repeats in her best impression of his voice and accent, and is rewarded when he snorts.

"She started it," he says mildly, coming closer then and hovering at arm's length until he thinks better of it and drops into the desk's chair. In this position, she's taller than Alistair is by a good six inches, and it's strange to look  _down_  at his face.

His hair is truly hilarious from the top, though. It's like a dandelion.

Alistair leans back in the chair and stretches out his legs, folding his hands over his stomach. "So," he says, and his voice belies the apparent unconcern of his posture. "You never said: why are you down here, instead of napping up there?"

Marian rolls her eyes. "Have you ever taken a nap, only to wake up and realize that not only do you feel exactly as you did before you took the nap, not only have you wasted hours of your life you'll never get back, but you have a headache and a disgusting taste in your mouth to boot?"

Alistair stares at her, utterly confused. "No?"

She laughs, just the slightest amused breath. "That's what naps are like for me. I'd rather get all my sleeping done at once, thank you." It's a good answer that happens to be true and mentions nothing of the past dreaming she'd experienced on the docks, nor the torn Veil that will further haunt her dreams, nor the more prosaic nightmares she's anticipating after nearly being eaten by undead.

She's not sure if Alistair believes her or not; he doesn't ask again, just tips his head back against the chair... but then she reminds herself of how very open he's been with her, answering all her questions, almost like he trusts her. The vulnerability that he just lets her see is a heady thing, and she wants to return the favor. She wonders if that's a kind of strength in itself.

So Marian tells him about her dream yesterday, about what she's afraid waits for her when she closes her eyes in this place, about the demons who have been whispering in her ear since her magic came to her. Alistair sits up in his chair, coming closer like just his presence will protect her.

It actually does help.  _It was good to talk about it_ , he'd said about Duncan, and he was right. Blast him.

Of course, he was just agreeing with her, so does that mean she's agreeing with herself?

"You're strong," Alistair says, his eyes so earnest. "You would never have survived the Joining and the Harrowing if you weren't. You can handle this."

"Do you think I could learn the sword?" Marian asks, without realizing she'd wanted to know until the words practically fall out of her mouth. She blinks.

Alistair straightens, staring at her like she's got two heads – and considering what she'd just asked, she doesn't blame him in the slightest. "Why would you want to?"

She shrugs one shoulder, and the gesture allows her to look away, toward the ground. "Twice today I've been incapacitated," Marian says quietly. "In both cases I would have liked another option. If you hadn't been there when that skeleton grabbed me – " A shudder works its way out of the deepest parts of her.

"You would have done something," Alistair says, his voice low and warm.

"I don't have many spells that are safe to cast when other people are attached to my target," she points out. "Lightning will pass right through the enemy and attack anyone attached to it, and fire will burn everyone."

"I don't know if it would work," Alistair admits. "I've never heard of a mage using a sword before." He frowns and sits straight up, holding his hands out to her, palms up. "Grip my hands," he says, and she hesitates for only a moment before setting her hands in his. He instructs her to squeeze as tightly as she can, and she does; then he holds his hands in front of him and tells her to push as hard as she can, and finally he has her make a fist while he holds her forearm. Marian can't tell if she passes the tests or not.

"I still don't know," Alistair says in the end. "You're not strong enough for anything but a single sword, and even for that you'd need to build up the muscles in your arm and shoulder. My fear is that you would end up half a mage and half a warrior, and not good enough at either."

Marian sighs, her shoulders slumping a little. "I'm tired of being so bad at fighting," she says.

"I can work with you anyway," Alistair offers. "Though you're not as bad as you think you are. And I bet Leliana would be happy to show you how to use a dagger, or a shortsword, maybe."

She smiles, a little too widely, a little too tired; it's just too much effort to hide things right now, and he doesn't seem to care, so why should she? "Thanks," she says. He's leaning up a little in the chair, his hair glowing in the candlelight, his face shadowed. Impulsively Marian leans forward to hug him, bending right over at the waist in order to reach him.

His shirt is old and thin, and his skin is very warm under her hands. He smells good; maybe he got a bath, too. Alistair hesitates, but then he awkwardly reaches up and pats her on the back, making her giggle. "Sorry," Marian says. She can feel pronounced muscles under her fingertips as she draws away, and it strikes her just then that she doesn't want to let go; she wants to run her hand over his shoulder and up his throat, to feel his pulse in her palm, to tilt up his chin and find out if his lips are soft and the way he'd sigh –

Marian lets go like she's been burnt, but maybe she has, because she can still feel the warmth of his skin. She folds her fingers into her palms like she wants to hold onto him. Perhaps she does.

 _Shit_.

"Never apologize for hugs," Alistair says with a crooked smile. He leans back again, a safe distance, and Marian lets her hands relax.

It's fine. She wants him, but it's a terrible idea, and he's shown no signs of wanting her in return. It's  _fine_. This...  _desire_... will go away quickly enough.

"Well," Marian says brightly. "It must be time for dinner soon." She looks down at herself and grimaces. "I don't think this is the sort of clothing Isolde expects at her table." Not that she has anything else beside her armor, Circle robes, and a few shifts, but she'll figure something out. She just has to get away, to  _think_  without breathing the same air as Alistair.

She puts her hands down on the desk to lever herself off, and she swears when she realizes that there's something hard under the pile of papers under her right hand, hidden from Alistair by her legs. If she's broken something of Arl Eamon's while he lies dying... She slips her hand under the papers to take the thing out.

It's a little porcelain amulet of Andraste rising from the flames. It's quite lovely, actually, even though it's been broken into a thousand pieces and painstakingly reassembled.

That thought rings a bell, and it only takes a moment's hunt through her memory to connect it: Alistair on the cliff looking out over the village. He'd been talking about his mother's amulet, which he'd thrown at the wall, where it shattered.

All this goes through her mind in an instant while she stares at the amulet in her hand. It seems impossible that he'd been talking about this very thing, but here it is, in Eamon's study. She lifts her head to look at Alistair, who glances back, and Marian offers the amulet to him. "Is this the amulet you were talking about yesterday?"

"What?" Alistair says, sitting bolt upright, reaching for her hand. "Let me see."

She pours the amulet and chain into his hand, careful not to touch him. He doesn't seem to notice. "It is," he says, confused, his brow furrowed. "It has to be. But why isn't it broken?" Alistair looks up at her. "It was here?"

"It was  _here_ ," Marian says, patting the pile of papers by her thigh.

He shakes his head a little. "He must have found it after I threw it at the wall," he says, slowly, thinking it out even as he speaks. "And then he repaired it,  _kept_  it?" Alistair glances up at her, lost. "I don't understand. Why would he do that?"

Marian takes a breath, studying her hands as she thinks it over. The way that he waits for her to speak, and the weight he gives to her opinion... she wants to give this careful thought.

Eamon collected every piece, when she knows that porcelain can shatter right down to fine shards. The repair work was fine work, each piece aligned closely with the next. It might have been done by him, or it might not, but if not, he'd paid dearly for good craftsmanship. Both of those facts speak to her of painstaking care and a desire to make right what was broken. "I think it means he cares about you," she finally says, looking back at him to find him still staring at her. "That he wanted to fix the breach between you, but didn't know how."

Alistair looks down at the amulet, rubbing his thumb over the face of it. She's noticed him doing that before, as they walk, at the campfire, when they're waiting for things, mostly with a worry stone that he keeps in his pocket. It seems to be a kind of habit, something he does when he's thinking about something else. "I guess you could be right," he says eventually, startling her out of staring at his hands. And his fingers.  _Bugger_. "We never really talked that much, and then the way I left..."

Marian tucks that fact away in her mind along with all the other things Alistair's let slip about his childhood. She wants to reach out to him, to comfort him, and she tucks her hands into her lap to make sure she doesn't. "At least you have it back now," she offers.

He grins at her, folding the amulet up in his hand. "That I do," he says. "Thank you. I mean that. I thought I'd lost this to my own stupidity."

"You're welcome," she says, touched, and smiles back.

Alistair sighs, and his eyes drift a little, staring past her. "I'll need to talk to him about this if he recovers." He shakes his head. " _When_  he recovers. I wish I'd had this a long time ago." He falls silent, and she's content to let him think. They've been through a lot of highs and lows in one conversation. She'd wanted to get away earlier, and she still does want room to think, but she doesn't want to,  _can't_  leave him now without being heartless. He doesn't deserve to be treated poorly because of her own feelings.

"Wait," he says, breaking into her chain of thought. "Did you remember me mentioning this?"

Marian blinks at him, disconcerted. "Of course I remembered," she says. "Alistair, it was  _yesterday_."

Alistair laughs. "Fair enough. I suppose I'm more used to people not really listening when I go on about things."

"Then they're stupid," she says indignantly, and when he grins at her, she flushes and kicks at his shoulder. "Shut up," she grumbles and slides off the desk, this time without breaking anything on her way. She can't deal with the way he's looking at her: soft, pleased, amused, almost  _fond_ , Void take him. She needs the room to think, or at least to move.

She paces down the bookshelves toward the tall one at the end. She hasn't been through this shelf, and automatically she looks up at the titles on the spines –

"Oh!" Marian gasps. Eamon has the entire collected works of Brother Genitivi, including his  _Tales of the Destruction of Thedas_ , which someone – she will name no names – had stolen from the Circle library before she'd had a chance to read it. It's in the bibliography of so many of her reference tomes that she's practically fixated on it. And here it is, within her grasp.

Well, sort of. Marian makes an irritated noise. Naturally, it's just out of her reach. She tries again, stretching up on the tip of her toes, and her hand just brushes the shelf's edge. She drops back onto her heels, frustrated. At the Circle library she'd had rolling ladders, or even chairs if she'd needed them. She eyes the shelf thoughtfully. It might be heavy enough to climb without tipping the thing over onto her, but –

"Allow me," Alistair says from behind her, and she has just enough time to swear at him in her mind for sneaking up behind her  _yet again_  before his hands are on her waist and he's lifting her straight up. She stops breathing – his hands are so  _warm_  – and she grabs his wrists and holds them tight.

It takes her a second before Marian realizes that the  _Tales_ is right in front of her nose, and that's why Alistair is holding her six inches in the air. He holds her effortlessly, without shaking muscles or heavy breathing, and she bites her lip hard and takes the book.

Alistair lowers her to the ground, but his hands linger around her waist, not holding tight but not letting go, either. Marian holds the  _Tales_  to her chest, takes a steadying breath, and turns around. He stands so close, looking down at her like he can't figure her out. She wants to know what's going on in his mind, why he's looking at her that way, why he's touching her like this, and at the same time she doesn't want to know the answer. This close the difference in their heights means that her head is tipped back, and she feels so vulnerable. She's always hated feeling vulnerable, and yet... And yet she doesn't mind so much right now.

That's the part that scares her.

Alistair's hands are still on her waist. She touches his wrist lightly with just her fingertips, and his hands drop away so fast she has to check to make sure she hadn't shocked him accidentally. His cheeks burn red, and he steps back several large paces. "Sorry," he says, looking away. "I – "

Marian interrupts him. She doesn't know what he's about to say, but knowing him it'll make it awkward, and that's exactly what she doesn't want. "Thank you," she says cheerfully, and when he glances at her in confusion she shifts the hefty book in her arms.

"Oh, um..." Alistair attempts a smile, though it looks more like he's eaten something off. "You're welcome."

She makes some excuse and flees the room like the Void itself is behind her, sucking her in, and only when she's on the other side of the door does she allow herself to breathe.


	20. The Dwarves

Marian slams the door to her guest chamber behind her; thankfully, Leliana is gone, leaving only Cú. She leans back against the door and gently thumps it with the back of her head. _What is_ wrong _with you?_ she asks herself. She's had her share of inconvenient lusts, the worst of which was a visiting lecturer from Ostwick named Tellyn. She and Lissette had mooned over her outrageously for the six months she'd spent at Lake Calenhad, along with most of the boys and nearly a quarter of the girls, and only a truly generous nature had kept the smile on Tellyn's face after what they'd put her through.

But now, with the warmth and weight of Alistair still shivering in her palms, she can safely say that _this_ is the worst it's ever been. She presses her hands to her stomach to hold herself in place, and reminds herself to breathe. It's not the end of the world. Alistair is a friend, even if he can't be anything more. This is her problem. She'll deal with it.

Determined now, she dresses for dinner in the enchanter robes that are her only real clothing and takes a deep breath before she walks out the door.

\---

They leave for the Circle early the next morning, leaving Morrigan and Sten to keep a wary eye on Connor. She thinks that Sten will be able to do what is necessary, if it comes to that while they're gone, and Morrigan is more knowledgeable than anyone she's ever met in the ways of magic. Redcliffe is as safe as she can make it.

Unfortunately, that also shrinks her party to Alistair, Leliana, and Cú. She hopes that they won't meet anything they can't handle.

Marian has caught herself looking at Alistair out of the corner of her eye more often than she'd like, and she knows she's being unsociable. Isolde had separated them at dinner last night, but she'd caught him glancing at her more than once.

She'd only caught him because she'd been glancing at him, too.

Now he walks ahead of her, talking in low tones with Leliana, and she's as free as she likes to look at the strength in his shoulders, his hips, the nape of his neck, his fingers when he scratches the back of his head.

So she doesn't. She turns it into a test of control, which as a mage is more essential to her than anything, and keeps her eyes precisely where they should be: watching for darkspawn and bandits. She wonders how long it'll take before she can sense the darkspawn the way Grey Wardens are supposed to, and that leads her back to Alistair before she shakes her head and banishes all thought from her mind.

With the guide Teagan provided, they make good time; they follow the road until around noon, then they strike north to cross the tributary that feeds into smaller lakes and then flows east to become the Drakon. It's marshland here, or will be when it's warmer, but for now it's still frost as far as the eye can see, even though it's nearly midway through Drakonis. They wade through reeds up to her hips, and Marian cannot keep her hands out of the ice. She blows on them as they walk.

Leliana slows her steps to walk alongside her. Marian smiles at her, but she's afraid it's a poor effort, as cold as she is. "Does it get this cold in Orlais?"

Leliana laughs. "Oh, yes! Once I had to go to Val Firmin in Guardian. I nearly froze to death."

"You make Orlais sound so exotic," Marian says wistfully, and then slides a teasing look at Leliana out of the corner of her eye with a lopsided smirk. "Or maybe it's just your accent."

"I wish your countrymen agreed with you," Leliana says, shrugging. "I think the occupation is still too near."

"Do people still treat you poorly?" Marian asks, a little surprised. It's true that the Orlesian occupation of Ferelden is still a fresh wound, but it was over years before she was born.

"No, not often," Leliana says. "It helps that I was with the Chantry. Many of the brothers and sisters are from Orlais, and so people are used to hearing the accent in someone with Chantry robes."

"What brought you to the Chantry, anyway?" Marian asks. "You didn't learn to use a dagger there."

Leliana laughs. "Did you think I was always a cloistered sister? The Chantry provides succor and safe harbor to all who seek it. I chose to stay and become affirmed." The amusement mellows and lingers on her face as she turns her face up to the weak spring sun.

"So you learned it before?" Marian asks curiously.

"Before I came to the Chantry, I was a traveling minstrel in Orlais," Leliana says, glancing over at Marian. The amusement has slipped from her face. "Tales and songs were my life. I performed, and they rewarded me with applause and coin. And my skill in battle..." She shrugs and looks away. "Well, you pick up different skills when you travel, yes?"

"Oh," Marian says, suddenly reminded of what she'd wanted to ask Leliana. "While we're on the subject – I was wondering if you'd be willing to teach me how to use a dagger?" When Leliana glances over, confused, Marian shrugs. "It just seems like it would come in handy on the road."

"Of course," Leliana says, her clear brow furrowed. "I would be delighted. Perhaps tonight?"

Marian agrees, and they walk on.

The guide leaves them when they reach the highway that stretches north along the east side of Lake Calenhad. They don't stop for lunch; instead they eat hand pies they'd bought in Redcliffe and push the pace as hard as they can. They're all exhausted and sore by the time they stop to make camp at twilight.

The campsite they choose is already occupied. Luckily, it's someone they know.

"Ah, Wardens!" Bodahn says, scrambling up from his sitting position beside the fire. "So good to see you. Won't you join me?" A boy is sitting next to him, smiling faintly in their direction, and they're framed by a covered wagon behind them. The firelight casts their shadows onto the wagon. It's all very homey and cheerful.

Marian and Alistair exchange glances, and she shrugs; he seems harmless enough, and they'd helped him before. The odds are good that if he decides to try for the bounty on their heads, they can overpower him and the boy easily.

"Thank you," Marian says, shedding packs and dropping to sit on the other side of the campfire. Alistair and Leliana follow suit. "We'd be delighted."

Cú immediately flings himself to the ground at her side with a grumpy _floomph_ and she laughs. "Sorry, boy," she says, scratching his neck and shoulder. "But you're in for more of the same tomorrow."

"Where are you headed?" Bodahn asks. It's not simple curiosity, either; he leans forward, intent, unusually interested in the answer.

Marian hesitates, wondering why exactly he'd like to know, so it's Alistair who answers, distracted as he digs through one of his packs. "We're going to Kinloch Hold."

"Ah," Bodahn says, and glances over at the boy who Marian can only assume is his son. "Then I've a proposition for you."

He's not after the bounty, but rather their protection as they travel Ferelden. He's happy to go where they go as long as there's profit in it for him, and in return he offers a considerable amount of his wagon space for their gear and a discount on his goods.

Marian glances at Alistair again, waiting for him to look up, but it takes him a moment and even then, all he does is shrug as he pulls a pile of rags and two small bottles out of his pack. She shrugs. "Why not?"

"Excellent," Bodahn says, coming around the fire and shaking her hand. "Sandal! Come meet the Warden."

Sandal's eyes wander past her before coming back to her face, and he offers his hand like he's not quite sure of what she's going to do with it. When she shakes it, he smiles so sunnily that she can't help but return his smile with one of her own.

"He's never been quite right in the head," Bodahn says, clapping Sandal on the shoulder. "But he's rather good with enchantments. One of those Tranquil fellows actually called him a..." He scratches his head, looking up at the sky like the word will fall out of the clouds into his head. "What was it now? A savant? Never heard of such a thing."

"Really?" Marian says, instantly intrigued. "Is he a Formari?"

"Like one of those Tranquil fellows?" Bodahn asks, and when she nods, he shakes his head. "No, he's no mage. He might be lyrium-addled, though. Orzammar gets a few of those, accidents and the like."

Faced with a mystery she has no chance of solving, Marian suspects she should be feeling frustration and bitterness, but all she has room for is _delight_. Nature is infinitely more inventive than anything she's ever dreamt of.

That doesn't mean she won't at least _try_ to figure out how Sandal can enchant, of course. Even frustrating research is fun.

Leliana brings out their food supplies and puts her head together with Bodahn to figure out something for their evening meal, and while Marian is deciding whether to join them or not – she's no idea how to go about cooking food, and it seems like something she ought to know – Alistair approaches her.

"So I realized that nobody's ever shown you how to take care of your armor," Alistair says, clad in his soft clothes again, holding all of his armor and the rags and bottles he'd dug out of his pack. "And by nobody, I mean me. I think that was probably my job."

He seems easier, steadier now. Maybe she hasn't given herself away after all. They'd had several emotionally-charged conversations yesterday afternoon, after all, and any one of them could have made him awkward in her company today. She can do this. She can control herself.

Marian smiles, deliberately cheerful, and indicates the ground next to her with an expansive sweep of her hand. "Pull up a chair," she says.

Alistair drops next to her with a groan. "I haven't done this much walking since loaded marches in templar training," he says as Marian stands and begins the long, irritating process of shedding her armor. "Let me tell you, I didn't miss it."

"I won't miss lugging the packs all over," Marian agrees. "Thank the Maker for Bodahn." She drops her brigandine carelessly on the ground and pulls the tabard over her head before she continues. "But I like the walking. It's nice to be out in the air instead of stuck inside all the time."

With a fleeting smile, she disappears behind Bodahn's wagon to change into her tunic and pants and then carries the whole mess of leather and belts back to him. There, he shows her what to do: their boots are set aside for later to let the mud dry. The rest of the leather is cleaned with saddle soap and wiped clean, then checked over for holes and ripped seams. They both have scale mail, which can only be buffed and then oiled, and then she helps him polish his plate armor and his shield. Her staff requires only a thorough examination to make sure it isn't damaged, but his sword needs careful attention with cloth and whetstone and oil, which she watches with interest until Leliana returns and steals her away for dagger lessons.

She's _terrible_.

"No, truly, you're not," Leliana insists, but it's spoiled by the laughter she can't quite hide. Marian glares at Alistair out of the corner of her eye, who is pretending to be entirely too absorbed in his sword to be paying attention to them. The grin tugging at his lips suggests otherwise. Marian groans. She can _see_ what Leliana is doing, and she understands how to do it, but manipulating her body to do the same is proving much more difficult.

She sighs. "I don't think I bend that way," she says, but she gets into position again anyhow, determined to at least _try_.

Leliana takes pity on her after a while, showing her some stances she's supposed to practice every night and then gently suggesting that they break for dinner. Afterward, Marian and Alistair train in some exercises which are supposed to better her reaction time and increase her awareness of what's going on around her. It swiftly devolves into an impromptu game of tag with Alistair, Cú, Leliana, and Sandal that ends only when Cú accidentally knocks Marian over. She seizes on the excuse to stay down and pant for a minute, grunting when Cú lays his head on her stomach apologetically. "I'm all right," she says, patting him.

Sandal appears in her field of vision, peering at her curiously. She can't help but grin at him, and then she nudges Cú. "I think _someone_ wants to play... " she says, teasing, and laughs when Cú leaps to his feet with a bark and tears off with Sandal right behind him.

Marian is tempted to sleep right here, or perhaps to roll herself over by the fire and sleep there, but she knows it's only going to get colder as the night wears on. She rises, brushing herself off, and heads over to set up the tents.

\---

The next morning, they're up with the dawn, breaking their fast and on the road north soon after. Bodahn's wagon is pulled by two oxen he'd had grazing in the next field, and with their heavier gear in the back they make far better time today than they had yesterday.

The road in this part is crowded by trees and sparse ground cover, but where the trees thin she can just see the glossy waters of Lake Calenhad to the west. It comes closer and closer as the day draws on, and when the sun's highest they finally reach the turn for the docks. There's a jury-rigged stone staircase down to the ground and a path that leads them on, down a steep, steep hill and past the inn that guards the gates.

Marian remembers this part, both coming and going. Ten years ago, she'd been terrified out of her wits, newly separated from her family and taken to what she could only think of as a prison. When she'd passed this way with Duncan...

Maker, had it only been a month ago?

She'd been an odd mix of emotions: so guilty about unleashing Jowan on the world, and yet still exhilarated to finally escape and start her life. She'd sworn to herself she'd never go back.

At least they can't keep her this time, not without going through her friends first. And she is rather more formidable than she was when she left. She lifts her chin and leads them down the hill to the docks.

A templar in full armor waits there, his arms folded, bare-faced and frowning. As she draws closer she realizes that she recognizes him; Carroll is one of the templars the apprentices whisper about, the one they call peculiar. Before Marian can speak, he lifts his hand and points at her, his eyes narrowed. "You! You're not looking to get across to the tower, are you? Because I have strict orders not to let _anyone_ pass."

He sounds cranky. _Fantastic_. Well, at least he hasn't smote her yet.

"Where's the ferryman?" Marian asks him, frowning. The same ferryman had been there only a month ago to take her and Duncan across the lake, and she can't be sure, but that looks like his boat.

"Kester?" Carroll asks doubtfully, and when she nods, he jerks his head at the inn, crossing his arms back over his chest and staring over her head.

She's obviously being dismissed. It's too bad that she's not done with him yet.

"We need to get to the tower," Marian says.

Carroll's eyes come back to hers, annoyed. "No one gets to the tower," he says impatiently, trying to stand taller. "No one. The tower is off-limits to _all_!"

She has no time for this. Connor could be rampaging as they speak.

"I'm a _Grey Warden_ ," Marian snaps impatiently. "Let me pass."

He looks her up and down and snorts, dismissing her. He doesn't seem to recognize her, or her uniform, and she wonders if he's entirely addled or if there's still a brain in there somewhere. "Oh, you're a Grey Warden, are you?" he says, sing-song and sarcastic. "Prove it."

Then he has the _nerve_ to tap his foot, like he's waiting for her to hop to it.

"Prove it?" she asks, raising her eyebrows.

Carroll shrugs. "Kill some darkspawn. Come on. Let's see some righteous Grey Wardening."

Marian ruthlessly suppresses the urge to correct his grammar and then shove him into the lake. For all she knows, the templars on the other side will attack anyone not escorted by this man.

Though maybe they could knock him out and prop him up in the boat. That should get them close enough, right?

She smiles tightly and gestures at the empty shore. "We seem to be lacking in darkspawn."

"That's good, I suppose. Wouldn't want darkspawn smeared across the landscape," Carroll says, rocking back on his heels thoughtfully. Marian is now biting her tongue to keep herself in check. "I hear their blood is black. Is that true? You'd know if you were a Grey Warden."

Marian has now reached the absolute end of her patience. "Carroll," she says, slowly and calmly, "I am going to set you on fire and drown you in the lake if you don't take us across to the tower." When he stares at her instead of doing anything productive, she raises her eyebrow at him. " _Now_."

He swallows and waves them into the boat. "I'll take you right now," he says, and she knows she shouldn't enjoy the fear in his voice, but she does. Just a little.

"Maker, finally," Alistair mutters.

The trip across the lake is as bad as she feared; there's some wind today, and it chops the water into tiny waves that drive the boat up and down. Marian clutches the edge and tries not to breathe while Leliana rubs her back.

It's two long, anxious, miserable hours until they dock in a cavern under the Tower and Carroll leads them up the wide stairs to the main level.

And then here she is, exactly where she never wanted to be again. Greagoir is even standing exactly where he'd been those ten years ago, like he knew they were coming. 

But something's not right. Usually there are just two templars guarding the doors, a ceremonial post more than anything – apprentices are more likely to try to go out the windows – but now the foyer has all the feverish activity of a war camp. It's _crowded_ with templars, but most of them are over by the doors to the rest of the tower, shields up and swords bared.

The doors are closed.

Those doors are _never_ closed.

Alistair notices them, too, because he says, "Are they keeping people out? Or _in_?"

That's a question she'd _love_ the answer to.

It's three long strides to Greagoir where he's giving orders to a pair of templars who nod and stride off when they see her. Greagoir turns and when he realizes who she is, his lip curls.

Good to see they're on the same page, then.

"Knight-Commander Greagoir," Marian greets him with all the chilly civility she can muster.

"Marian Amell," Greagoir says, musing out loud. He eyes her uniform. "A proper Grey Warden now, are we? Glad you're not dead."

"Liar," Marian says, narrowing her eyes.

"Perhaps," Greagoir says, shrugging as if it makes no difference to him. Perhaps it doesn't. "Now, we're dealing with a situation that doesn't involve you. _Grey Warden_."

It's too bad for him that she's no intention of going anywhere. She crosses her arms over her chest and raises an eyebrow, daring him to have them thrown out, which is what he'd have to do to make her go away.

Greagoir actually looks like he's thinking about it, glances at Leliana and Alistair behind her and Cú at her side before he shakes his head and turns to the great doors, looking at them like they've failed him. "The tower is no longer under our control," he says quietly. "Abominations and demons stalk the halls."

Marian takes one shuddering, shocked breath and then clamps her mouth shut. This is a _disaster_. What in the Maker's name could have done such a thing? What is Greagoir, who is quick to judge and quick to punish, going to do? She still has friends here – Lissette, Rashmi, Petra, even Jervais, who at the time she'd thought she'd never be able to forgive. Now she can barely remember what they'd fought about in the first place.

"We were too complacent," Greagoir says, shaking his head, and then turning back to her with a glare. "First Jowan, now this. Don't think I've _forgotten_ your role in Jowan's escape."

 _Don't think I've forgotten yours_ , she thinks fiercely, biting her tongue. Oh, how she would _love_ to tell Greagoir exactly what she thinks of him and the Circle and the fucking Rite of Tranquility.

But now is not the time. There are bigger things at work here than either of them. Even so, she can't resist just one twist of the knife. "Does that mean you haven't caught him yet?" Marian asks, all innocent, curious enquiry.

"And how are we supposed to have done this?" Greagoir asks, annoyed. "He is one man in all the world, and _you_ ensured that we have no way to locate him." The pointed reminder of what she'd done sours her mood, and her face darkens as he goes on to say, "I can only hope that someday Jowan gets what he deserves. But right now I have other pressing concerns."

"Tell me what happened here," Marian orders, passing on the comment about what Jowan deserves. That's no longer up to either of them.

Greagoir takes it graciously, with only narrowed eyes showing his displeasure at her tone. "We don't know," he admits grudgingly. He glances at the great doors again. "We saw only demons, hunting templars and mages alike. I realized we could not defeat them and... told my men to flee."

A man like Greagoir would never give that order if he could avoid it, and she hears that shame in his voice. She cannot feel pity for this man, but she doesn't have to laugh at his pain either.

Best to move along.

"What is being done?" Marian asks.

"I have sent word to Denerim, calling for reinforcements and the Right of Annulment."

" _What?_ " Marian snaps, shocked, appalled, and furious. "You're talking about killing every mage in the Circle!" Her _friends_ , the senior enchanters who were her teachers, even the _children_ – No. It cannot be allowed.

"Marian..." Alistair says reluctantly, and she turns right around to glare at him instead. He _cannot_ think of defending this. He looks like he doesn't want to be saying what he's saying, either, but that doesn't help. "The mages are probably already dead. And if there are abominations in there..."

"Your friend is right," Greagoir says. He is speaking more gently now, like a Chantry Mother delivering bad news, but it still gets her back up. She clenches her fists tight. "This situation is dire. There is no alternative – everything in the tower must be destroyed so it can be made safe again."

She turns then, once she's sure her face is under control. "They can't _all_ be dead," she says to him, and to her horror her voice wavers. She swallows, her mouth drawn tight, and only when she's sure her voice is steady does she continue. "They _can't_."

Greagoir shakes his head. "If any are still alive, the Maker Himself has shielded them. No one could have survived those monstrous creatures. It is too painful to hope for survivors and find... nothing." He really does sound like it hurts him, and it rings true in a way she rarely hears from him. Can he truly consider Irving a friend?

How can he, when every day he faces the possibility of having to kill Irving? Those feelings ought to be self-contradictory. Where one grows, how can the other?

But maybe she can use that.

"Let us go in," Marian says, and she is not too proud to beg now, not for her friends and for the children she might save. " _Please_."

Greagoir laughs. "What can you do?"

"Something. Anything," she says, grasping at straws. "I can at least _try_." _That's more than you're doing_. When he continues to look skeptical, she gestures at her well-worn uniform. "What did you think I'd been doing since I left? Embroidery? We can handle what's inside, I promise you."

Greagoir studies her for a long, endless moment while she holds her breath, waiting for his answer. If he turns her away, she's triply buggered: her friends, the treaty with the mages, and poor, lost Connor. She can't cut her way through an entire tower's worth of templars.

And then Greagoir nods once, sharp and decisive, and she can finally breathe. "A word of caution..." he says, and she locks her eyes on his, hating that she's once again waiting on his word. "Once you cross that threshold, there is no turning back. The great doors must remain barred. I will open them for no one until I have proof that it is safe. I will only believe it is over if the First Enchanter stands before me and tells me it is so. If Irving has fallen..." He sighs. "Then the Circle is lost, and must be destroyed. May Andraste lend you her courage, whatever you decide."

Greagoir lifts his hand, and the templars at the door lift the great, heavy beam barring the doors shut. Marian, Leliana, Alistair, and Cú file through, and the doors creak shut behind them.


	21. The Cleanse

The sound of the doors closing reverberates down the hall. Marian takes a shaky, tremulous breath and turns to Alistair and Leliana. "I'm sorry," she says, looking them each in the eyes. "If we can't save Irving, we're stuck here until they come back with the Right of Annulment. I should have asked you both if you were willing."

Alistair raises his eyebrows at her. "You're kidding, right?" He pulls down his shield and fits it to his arm, nodding at her when he's done, ready for anything.

"Marian," Leliana says gently, and when she looks over Leliana smiles. "We are right behind you."

She smiles back at them, lopsided and grateful, and then has no more excuses; she turns back to the main hall, which is silent and still and shadowed in a way she's never seen before. A tower of mages has no need for penny-pinching in their use of mage lights or enchanted dweomers. Either the magical lanterns have started to fail and there is no one to replace them, or someone is putting them out apurpose.

Neither possibility is particularly comforting.

Marian takes down her staff, just to be ready, and paces up the hall toward the girl's side dorms, but she stops dead when she notices the bodies on the ground before the door. One's a templar, nameless in full plate and helm, but the other is Elodie, a younger apprentice whose bed lies against the opposite wall from her own. Marian doesn't need to check for a pulse; the spray of dried, old blood extends for three feet past her slashed wrists.

The templar doesn't have a mark on him, and neither does he have a weapon.

"Blood magic," Marian says. Her voice is unexpectedly loud in the silence.

"If there's one, there's probably more," Alistair says, uneasy. "Like cockroaches."

Marian's been keeping herself from thinking that very thing by dint of sheer will. _Thanks, Alistair_.

Her first step into the girl's side is cautious, wary. It's empty, the furniture pushed into half-formed barricades, bodies here and there that Marian can't stop herself from checking. She knows they're dead; it's clearly been days since anyone living was in this room. But she has to check.

None of them are anything more to her than nodding acquaintances. She blows out a heavy breath, glancing at the empty bed that had once been hers, and takes them into the boy's side, which is also empty of the living.

Here she finds the thing she feared she would.

Jervais lays against the wall on the far side of the room, his eyes empty. His throat has been cut, a lengthy wound that starts clean and ends ragged and torn, and there is not enough blood around him to account for his whole body's weight. Blood magic, then. Either way, she hadn't been fast enough.

 _I'm sorry I didn't come here first_ , Marian tells him to the background music of Leliana softly singing the requiem. _I'm sorry I didn't swallow my pride and make up. And I'm so, so sorry I failed you._

Marian closes his eyes, says a short, silent prayer, and stands, passing her thumb over her chest in the Maker's Circle. "Maker take you to his side," she says to him, to his corpse, and walks back out into the hall. Alistair and Leliana trail silently behind her. She wants to weep, and she can't, and so she stalks down the hall, tears ripping at her throat as she flings open the door to the next room.

She's greeted by roaring and fire, a rage demon threatening the smallest apprentices across the room, and the words of a spell are already on her lips, her hand tight on her staff –

Wynne steps in front of the demon, drawing the Fade around her like a cloak, and freezes it with one spell, turning her back on it afterward like it's nothing, like what she just did was nothing. Perhaps to her it was.

And then Wynne turns to her, and pins her with a look like she's been a badly-behaved apprentice. Oh, she remembers that look. "Marian," Wynne says, with surprise quickly shifting into naked suspicion. "What are you doing here? Why did the templars let you through?"

"I told Greagoir I would find out what's happening," Marian says, and then she spots Petra, hovering over Wynne's shoulder. Marian smiles at her, and she knows it's shaky around the edges, but it's real. _Andraste, thank you_. Petra smiles back, paler and thinner than she ought to be, and Marian aches to hug her. But Wynne is still on edge, and business comes before anything she wants. "Do you know?"

"I do," Wynne says, regarding her steadily. "But first: the doors are barred. The templars will only open them if they intend to attack us. Are they coming?"

"They're waiting for the Right of Annulment and reinforcements from Denerim," Alistair says, so neutrally that she knows he's unhappy about it. Marian hadn't wanted to say it, hadn't even been able to think about what her reply should be, and she's thankful she didn't have to.

"We came ahead to save who we could," Marian says instead.

Wynne sighs and turns her face away, closing her eyes. "So," she says, and it sounds like something Marian never expected to hear from Wynne: resignation. "Greagoir thinks the Circle beyond hope. He probably assumes we are all dead."

"He said it was too _painful_ to hope any were alive," Marian says, still stewing over Greagoir's curious idea of friendship.

Wynne looks back at Marian. "And so they abandoned us to our fate. But even trapped as we are, we have survived," she says fiercely. "If they invoke the Right, however, we will not be able to stand against them."

She's right. Every templar in Ferelden is probably on their way here right now, and the only hope of saving anyone is for Marian and her friends to find Irving before something happens to him. That's assuming he's still alive, of course, which isn't likely in itself; Marian looks around the chamber, counting four young apprentices, two older ones, including Petra, and one other mage besides Wynne. There had been near seventy mages living here when she left.

"But Wynne, what _happened_?" Marian asks, bewildered. She hadn't thought that the Circle, of all places, could fall into chaos so easily, and so quickly. It had seemed like a bastion to her, a tower of strength that she could never escape, and even when she choked on it she'd respected its strength.

"Let it suffice to say that we had something of a revolt on our hands, led by a mage named Uldred," Wynne says, with an almost bitter twist to her mouth. Marian knows the name, though she's never met the man; some of the senior enchanters are too _busy_ or too important – or too self-important – to teach the apprentices. "When he returned from the battle at Ostagar, he tried to take over the Circle." She indicates the Tower around her with one hand, as eloquent a gesture as any cutting words. "As you can see, it didn't work out as he had planned." She sighs. "I don't know what became of Uldred, but I am certain all this is his doing. I will _not_ lose the Circle to one man's pride and stupidity."

"Then what are we going to do?" Marian demands.

Wynne rewards her for that with a smile, a real one. "I erected a barrier over the door leading to the rest of the tower, so nothing from inside could attack the children," she says, gesturing at the bright, glowing field covering the doorway behind her. "You will not be able to enter the tower as long as the barrier holds, but I will dispel it if you join with me to save this Circle."

Hasn't she already said as much? Why does no one _listen_? "Then what are you waiting for?" Marian asks, with an impatient gesture toward the door. "If you're coming, then let's _go_."

Wynne stares at her for a moment, surprised, and then laughs. "I must admit, I had not expected to find you so eager," she says. "But it's a most welcome surprise." She sobers then, amusement fading down to concern. "Once Greagoir sees that we have made the tower safe, I trust he will tell his men to back down. He is not unreasonable."

That is not Marian's experience, biased though it might be, but she's still hoping to find Irving alive. And... even after everything, she still holds some affection for him, as angry as she is and as frustrated by his politicking, his lack of concern for the very real dangers he seems to be blind to. He's still her mentor, who taught her so much and agreed, laughing, when she asked for more.

"Greagoir will only hear it from Irving," Marian warns her.

"Then that is what we must achieve," Wynne says, calm now, and determined.

She hasn't found Lissette, or Rashmi. There have to be more survivors than just these here.

"Petra, Kinnon..." Wynne says, looking at Petra and the man she doesn't know. "Look after the others. I will be back soon."

Wynne strides forward to deal with the barrier, but Marian detours slightly, waving the others after Wynne, and yanks Petra into a hug. "I've never been so scared as when I heard what was happening," she whispers into Petra's ear, leaning back to look at her. "Are you all right?"

Petra laughs, though it almost sounds like a sob, or like she's been crying, and she's far too pale. "I am now," she says. "Wynne saved me from a demon. I was on my way down to the library when I heard screaming, and a demon came around the corner, and then Wynne was there, in front of me, shielding me. It was light and fire, blood and chaos..."

" _Petra_ ," Marian groans, all too used to her flights of fancy.

"You asked!" Petra says in irritation, pinching her. " _Listen_ , Marian. When it was... over, the demon was dead but Wynne wasn't moving either." She swallows. "I was so afraid she was... gone. But as I moved to help her, she stirred and coughed."

"Then she's all right, isn't she?" Marian asks, glancing over to Wynne, who is impatiently waiting for her with Alistair and Leliana. Cú is by her side, as always. It doesn't sound like anything she needs to be concerned about – Wynne was probably just knocked out. Right?

"I don't know," Petra confesses. "She might be completely fine, but then again, maybe she didn't come away from that totally unharmed. Just... look after her, all right?"

"Of course I will," Marian says, and hugs her again, reluctantly pulling away afterward. "I have to go. Keep yourself safe, all right?"

"You too," Petra says, worry in her eyes. Marian smiles and steps away, her hand on Cú's head.

Wynne takes down the barrier with all the effort of falling off a log, and they proceed into the library, Alistair in the lead.

The library's always been her sanctuary, and it's where the majority of her apprentice lessons had taken place, but this is not the comforting refuge she remembers. Most of the lights are gone, or glowing only dimly, and what is usually a neat, orderly area is now knocked-over piles of books, broken chairs, scorch marks on the floor, and the smell of cooking meat.

She swallows, her nostrils flaring wide, and decides not to think about that last one too much.

They have to fight their way for every inch through rage demons and twisted, grotesque abominations, but Wynne more than makes up for it; she slides into place in their group seamlessly, handling healing and support far better than Marian ever did, leaving her to concentrate on what she does best.

They fight their way through the three sections of the library and up the stairs to the mage quarters, briefly stopping to reassure Owain and deal with three blood mages. She doesn't know any of them, thank Andraste and the Maker. Still, that they were here and alive and unmolested must mean that they have some manner of control over the abominations. Marian doesn't quite know all the ramifications of that and doesn't have the time to think it over, but it leaves a heavy feeling in her stomach and a bad taste in her mouth and drives her forward, ever forward, to find her friends and Irving.

The last blood mage begged for mercy. She'd been persuasive, even eloquent. But Marian is finding that she has precious little mercy for those who would take the short path, the easy path, who would twist another's mind and turn them into monsters.

She has none for those who would hurt her friends.

What does that say about her? Would her father even recognize her now?

 _My magic will serve what is best in me_ , she reminds herself, and the grief that surfaces then is now an old friend.

Here, like downstairs, someone has made a shambles of the library, ripping down books, throwing furniture around, and leaving bodies to rot where they dropped. She'll never be able to remember this place any other way, now, and that makes her sad in a distant, hollow way she can't explain.

The first room in the circle past the library is the guest room she'd escorted Duncan to the first time they met. The second is the junior mage quarters, where she'd almost had a room of her own for the very first time. In the third is another pair of blood mages and an abomination, and the fourth is the Circle Chantry. The last room before the stairs is Irving's office.

Here she pauses their head-long rush, looking around. She hasn't forgotten Morrigan's request, and her best guess is that Flemeth's book is here, in Irving's office, where it will never be out of his sight. Something so powerful demands that sort of treatment.

She starts rifling the bookshelves and cupboards, explaining what she's looking for as she does, and Leliana and Alistair start on the other side of the room. To her surprise, Wynne says nothing, only folds her arms and waits, a little impatient but silent all the same.

"Here," Leliana says, kneeling before a trunk in the corner. "I think this is it."

Marian takes one look at the book and puts her hands behind her back. There is some very powerful magic floating around the grimoire that she doesn't even want to touch, much less carry on her person, and once again she wonders what exactly Flemeth is, and what she might be capable of. "Do you have room in your pack?" she asks Leliana, who nods and stows it away.

They move up to the next level, going quietly in order to avoid bringing the whole tower down on them, and there's nothing waiting for them in the large chamber at the top of the stairs. It's colder here, and though the temperature itself feels good to a body grown warm through hard work, she wonders what might be up here to cause it.

"Do you get the feeling things are just getting worse as we go up?" Alistair asks, in the tone of one who isn't really expecting an answer.

The next room holds the enemies she was expecting in the first room, and she groans when she realizes that it's undead, _again_ , and exactly how many there are. Alistair takes the brunt of them, using his shield to batter them away in short, heavy strokes while he cuts the skeletons apart, one by one. Cú circles around the back and thins the ranks as Leliana puts away her bow and draws her daggers, guarding Alistair's flank. Wynne is kept busy healing Alistair and her mabari, but Marian catches a glimpse of the horror on the other side of the room and flings a force field around it, buying them a precious moment to clear out the skeletons before they deal with that _thing_.

It takes everything they've got to bring it down and in the end, only Wynne is left without injury. "I'm _so_ glad you're here," Marian says, gasping, as Wynne lays a cool trail of healing magic over a deep burn on her neck.

"You were never too interested in healing, as I recall," Wynne says, but there's a wry tilt to her mouth that says perhaps she didn't mind Marian's inattention too much. "I'm surprised you've made it this far."

"It turns out that healing potions come in handy," Alistair says. Marian narrows her eyes at him and he shrugs, a smirk growing from the corner of his mouth; she wonders exactly how much effort it would take to train Cú to eat his socks.

It's a brief moment of levity that fades too quickly. There are more abominations and rage demons next door, and she's so deep in her spell chain that she doesn't dodge quickly enough when an abomination takes a swipe at her face. If Leliana hadn't pulled her away at the last moment, she would have lost an eye, and even then it takes Wynne far longer than it should to heal her wound. They're growing tired and less effective; she's starting to make stupid mistakes, and Wynne is clearly struggling. Marian calls for a rest.

It only takes fifteen minutes or so for Wynne to look much better and then she urges them on. It's here that she meets her first possessed templar. A chill runs right down her spine. She'd thought that perhaps the templars would be more resistant to blood magic, or at least able to kill the blood mages, but it appears she was wrong, and now she has to fight something that can strip her of her powers with a moment's thought.

It's only then that she realizes that Alistair has changed the way he fights; now he keeps himself between her and Wynne and the possessed templars, checks on them over his shoulder as often as he can get away with. She needs to remember to do something nice for him later.

They clear this floor without incident; only a long, involved fight with a desire demon and its attendant pack of templars gives them anything to be concerned about until they reach the central room, which looks to have been the templars' mess hall and is now host to an abomination and demons and undead. They've done something to the room, _grown_ something huge and sprawling and horribly organic, which Marian can swear she sees moving out of the corner of her eye. It looks uncannily like innards.

Marian shivers and hangs well back until the undead are defeated and they can carefully thread their way through to the stairs to the next floor, which is covered here and there in lumps of the flesh growing down from the ceilings. These really do move, subtly swelling and shrinking, like they're breathing.

She doesn't know for sure what this stuff is, but she has some suspicions, and it has to do with all the people that should be here and are nowhere to be found. She takes special care not to touch the things after that thought.

When they try to clear the first room on this floor, they find a desire demon and her pet templar. Marian readies herself for another battle, but the demon speaks and appeals to her, asking simply to be left alone with her meal.

There had been desire demons on the last floor, but none of them had affected her the way this one does. Marian finds herself drifting, mellow, increasingly convinced that the demon in front of her is offering her a logical choice, that Marian's intruding on something meant to be private. The templar had asked for this, hadn't he? And if it's true that he'll die if they kill the woman...

 _The desire demon_ , something inside of her whispers.

She takes a short, startled breath and holds it, forcing herself to think as clearly as she can. The sheer want that she feels, the urge to leave this room and these people to their fate, is all that she needs to convince her that the demon is far too dangerous to live.

When it's done, she kneels and crosses the templar's hands over his stomach and closes his eyes. Even a weak man doesn't deserve what happened to him, and who doesn't have unacknowledged desires in their heart?

They clear the rest of the floor as quickly as they can and proceed into the central room. There's a demon there, contemplating an unconscious mage's body, which lies in front of a huge sculpture overgrown with the corrupted flesh eggs. This demon doesn't attack on sight, either. She can't immediately identify what kind of demon it is, and that worries her. Marian prepares herself to resist whatever temptation this particular demon has in mind – not that it helped much with the desire demon, she reminds herself – and approaches it.

It turns then, and she's met with the horrible, mutilated face and chest, the overgrown flesh forming a crude sort of collar that it's decorated with small golden hoops here and there. "Oh, look," it says, in a drawling, gravelly voice that scrapes at her ears. "Visitors." It looks them over, taking its time to examine each of them in turn, and sighs. "I'd entertain you, but... too much effort involved."

"What are you doing to that man?" Marian demands, her staff in her hand.

"He's just resting, poor lad. He was so very, _very_ weary," the thing says, and it coincides with a swelling surge of returning exhaustion. It's been such a long day, and they've fought their way through four floors of the worst things Marian's ever seen. Perhaps it's time for a rest, after they've finished off this demon; surely the rest will agree.

It studies her. "You want to join us, don't you?" it says, and she can't deny that she does. She traps a yawn with her hand, and it only strikes her afterward how strange of a thing that was. An approaching fight always sets fire to her blood and quickens her breath. She's never felt like she could drop off on her feet before.

But it just keeps talking, rumbling in her ear, lulling her thoughts and tugging her mind down into the darkness behind her eyes. "Wouldn't you like to just lay down and... forget about all this?" it asks. "Leave it all behind?"

She's so _sleepy_. Her head nods once, twice; each time she catches herself just on the brink of sleep, and she can hear her friends trying to rouse each other behind her, caught in the same web. "We musn't," she says, but it doesn't come out loud enough for anyone to hear.

"Shhh," it says, soothing and friendly, and now it begins to come to her, one step at a time. "Why do you fight? You deserve more... You deserve a rest. The world will go on without you."

She can't keep her eyes open any longer. A tiny part of her mind cries out in terror, but the rest of her welcomes the silent, soothing comfort of sleep...


	22. The Nightmare

Marian wakes slowly, languidly, and cracks open her eyes to see mid-morning sunlight pouring in from the window across from her bed. The room is sun-warmed and still, soaked in hazy light, and she sighs happily, turning her face into her pillow in hopes of going back to sleep. 

After a moment she decides it's not to be and rolls onto her back, stretching her arms high over her head and pointing her toes. She holds it for a long one-two-three count and then relaxes back into her mattress, sighing. She feels rested, which is a nice change, but she also feels off-kilter, like she had a strange dream she can't remember. 

The best cure for that is her mum's tea, she decides, and rolls out of bed and dresses quickly in a vest and trousers before dashing down the stairs and into the kitchen. Her mother is kneading bread at the table, and there is a glorious aroma coming from the large pot suspended over the fire.

"Morning, mother dearest," Marian says, dropping a kiss on her mother's hair before she hunts down the teapot and pours herself a mug. "Is that dinner I smell?"

"Keep your fingers out of it, young lady," her mother says, turning the dough with a _thwack_ and a small cloud of flour. "I managed to save you a scone, but sleeping layabouts deserve no breakfast."

"That's all right," Marian says cheerfully, rummaging through the larder for a bit of butter for her scone. "Beth promised to do my chores this morning anyhow."

Mother laughs, sectioning the dough with quick, ruthless twists of her hands and tucking them away to rise. "So that's why she left so early. I won't ask what you're holding over her head," she says with a sly glance. 

Marian grins. "That's probably for the best," she agrees, and tucks into her breakfast.

Afterward, she pours herself another cup of tea and wanders outside, pausing around the side of the house to look at her favorite view of the river and gently rolling hills beyond, the astonishing green of the grass, the little patch of trees by the fence that bends in the breeze. Yesterday she'd seen a mama hart and two babies grazing on the other side of the river, but they're not here today. She sips her tea and just enjoys the sunshine, utterly content.

She glances up at the sun to check the time; it's almost exactly mid-morning, and she blinks, confused. Hadn't it been almost exactly midmorning when she woke up? She must have done it wrong, she finally decides, and then thinks nothing more of it. 

Her father is in the barn, checking the cow's feed. "Morning, Papa," Marian says, resting her chin on his shoulder. 

"Good morning," he says, amused. He gives her a nudge with his shoulder and she takes the silent hint, moving back and letting him turn around. He promptly steals her tea and finishes it off while she glares at him. "What?" he asks her, laughing. "Wasn't that for me?"

She growls at him, prompting another laugh, and goes to check on the newborn calf she'd helped deliver last week. He's still tiny, spindly, and delightful, but he's filling out nicely. Marian watches him sleep for the moment, putting off all the things she needs to do, until her father joins her in leaning on the gate.

"Where's Carver?" Marian asks him.

"He's taking a delivery over to Old Man Macready's place," her father says, glancing over the calf with a more clinical eye than hers. He seems satisfied. "I don't expect him back until later. He's got eyes for the daughter, doesn't he?"

" _Does_ he?" Marian asks, thrilled to the bone. She's going to make Carver's life _miserable_. It's one of the joys of being the eldest.

"Oh, my favorite child," her father says, throwing an arm around her shoulder and hugging her to his side, surprisingly strong. A panicked signal lights off deep in her mind, but then it disappears again so quickly that it leaves her confused and wondering what she'd been concerned about. 

"You say that to all three of us," Marian says, trying to cover her funny turn. She feels normal now, full from breakfast, safe and warm where her father holds her – though she'd be better if she'd been able to finish her tea. Maybe her strange mood is something left over from her dream? 

"That doesn't mean it's not true," her father says, smug. "In any case, since Bethany got up at dawn this morning to do all of your chores..." He trails off, eyeing her like he's waiting for her to spill Bethy's secrets. Marian keeps her mouth shut. "That means someone needs to slop the pigs."

She groans, but it really is only fair, so she takes a bucket of slops in each hand and trudges out to the wallow. The stench here is _unbelievable_ , and much as she tries to hold her breath as she empties the buckets into the pig trough, it still penetrates. 

It reminds her of something, actually, and she wracks her mind to figure out what as she heads back to the barn with the empty buckets. 

She can't remember. 

That's odd. Her memory is normally exceptionally good. She turns her head to ask...

There's nobody there.

There's no one on the farm except her father puttering in the barn and her mother in the kitchen. Carver is off courting and Beth is in town. She knows that.

Then who'd she been expecting?

Marian sets down the buckets with a clatter and her father pokes his head out of the last cow's stall to look at her. "Something wrong?" he asks, concerned, his voice so deep and comforting.

"I – " She pauses, looking for the words to describe how she's been feeling today. 

There are so many things she wants to say to her father, fascinating things she's learned over the years, questions she wants to ask him. Now she'll never be able to do any of those things, because he's dead. 

She remembers now, sitting with her mother and Bethy in Lothering, the slow, tearing grief of learning he was dead; she remembers the Blight, and Duncan, and Alistair and her companions and her dog. She remembers the Circle, and the abominations stalking the halls. 

She remembers the demon.

Her breath drags in and out of her throat, and she holds it for a moment, suppressing the tears as hard as she can. "You're not real," she says, her voice thick. She feels _betrayed_ , used, dirty, and yet she also feels the most horrible longing to go back in time half an hour and stop herself noticing the cracks in the façade. 

The demon must have dragged them into the Fade. That means...

Marian closes her eyes and brings her will to bear down on the world around her, and when she opens them again, she's armored and armed in the Warden colors that have come to mean safety. She unlimbers her staff as the thing wearing her father backs out of the stall. 

He comes to her swiftly, reaching for her even as she backs away. "Marian," he says, distressed. The illusion is finely crafted, she'll give the demon that, she thinks, trying to detach herself from the situation. Her father looks just the way she remembers him.

"Don't," she pleads, retreating until her back hits the wall behind her. "Just – _don't_."

It pauses several paces away from her, dropping its hand and and shaking its head. "Foolish child," it says; it's no longer pretending to be her father now, its voice swiftly dropping into an inhuman register, slow and thick with disgust. 

It hurts _so_ much to hear that from her father's mouth, to see the cruelty and disgust on his face, even though she knows it's not really him. Her eyes burn with tears she can't allow to fall. 

She was able enough to change her clothing into her armor. Maybe she can do something else. She closes her eyes and _commands_ herself to wake up, to be somewhere else, to see anything other than her father's face when she opens her eyes.

Marian opens her eyes. She is still in the barn, still huddling against the wall, still facing the shade of her father. The thing moves closer, stalking her, growling. "I have given you so much and you cast it back in my face," it says. "Can you not be content with the peace that I offer?"

"I won't live a lie," she says, her voice small and wavering. She means every fucking word, but it's still the hardest thing she's ever said. She wants this dream so badly she can taste it, for the templars never to have found her, to simply live with her family the way they should have lived. For her father to be alive, to be proud of her, to be _anything_ except dead and rotting three years gone. 

He is so close now that she can see the fine striations in his eyes, in her father's eyes. He looms over her, using her father's height to its advantage. "It seems only war and death will satisfy you," it growls. " _So be it_."

And then it wraps one hand around her throat and cuts off her air. Her hands go to his wrist, clawing and struggling, but he's strong, stronger than she expected, and she can't budge his arm or pry his fingers away from her windpipe. 

She needs to breathe. Her chest aches from more than just heartbreak. She's hitting him now, kicking him, doing anything to force him to let go or back away, but he absorbs every blow without even a blink, watching her face as she slowly suffocates to death.

Marian has only one option left.

She slams her conduit to the Fade wide-open and electrocutes her father until he is nothing but a charred corpse on the barn's floor.

Marian sucks in frantic, harsh breaths as best she can through her damaged throat while sobbing her heart out.

\---

A long time later, when she can breathe, she forces herself to her feet, wipes off her face and checks the house. As she expected, there's no one there. She still can't get out, no matter what she tries, and she's interrupted several times when the grief strikes anew and more tears fall. For lack of anything better, she goes back to the barn to search it again. 

His body is gone. In its place stands a stone obelisk, lit from within with a gentle blue light that soothes her as she drifts closer. She's no interest in touching random Fade objects that beckon to her, because that's a recipe for terrible things happening, but she hasn't found any other way out. Alistair and the others have to be here somewhere. She has to go.

Taking a deep breath, she lays her hand on the obelisk's side, and with a flash of blinding light she's thrown elsewhere. 

It takes her eyes a long, precious minute to adjust. She waits with her staff in her hand until her vision clears, and she's honestly surprised that nothing tries to attack her in the meantime. 

"You're Irving's apprentice, aren't you?" someone says to her right. Marian turns, bringing her staff to bear as she does, to find a mage in Circle robes standing, his hands held up in surrender. "You left with the Grey Warden, did you not?"

She recognizes him from the Circle, though she doesn't know his name. Marian lowers her staff. He introduces himself as Niall and carefully explains the nature of this place: the demon they'd faced has trapped herself and each of her companions in their own individual dreams that they cannot or will not try to leave. 

He tells her about Uldred, and the abomination he has become; he tells her about the Litany of Adralla, with which he once hoped to take back the Circle; he tells her about this little corner of the Fade, the sloth demon's island protections, and that her companions are probably there. Probably. Then Niall points out the obelisks which he thinks transports the user to the different islands, and _then_ he has the balls to mock her when she moves to use it.

Just because he thinks the situation is hopeless doesn't mean it really is, and too many people are counting on them for Marian to simply give up the way Niall has.

The obelisks take her to many places, and in each she encounters obstacles, puzzles, enemies beyond counting, and more shapeshifting than she can shake a stick at, which expands that secret place in her mind where the imprints live. She learns so much that she never expected to find here, grows stronger in ways she can't explain, and gives four trapped, desperate souls the release that they each ask for in their own way.

She hates this place. She cannot _bear_ the thought of being trapped here for all eternity while the demon sucks out her soul and consumes her life force. She'd rather die, like those lost, wretched souls.

Killing each of the demons lowers the barriers around the little islands on the outside, and if she's reading the runes right, there's four of them, one for each of her friends. She picks one at random, closing her eyes against the blinding light – seriously, what is _with_ that – and when she opens them again, she's on the island, a little patch of the Fade that twists even more strangely than the rest of the place. Marian searches it until she nearly trips over Cú, who is sleeping nose to tail, curled up in the smallest ball he can manage.

"Hey," she says softly, stooping down to smooth a soft hand over his head. "I was worried about you, boy."

Cú whuffs a little in his sleep, and she wonders what he's dreaming, if it's a soft bed and a bone or dog heaven with squirrels as far as the eye can see. She gently scratches around his ear. "It's time to wake up, dog," she says firmly. 

He cracks an eye open, and when he sees that it's her he stretches and gets to his feet, nosing at her hand until she obliges him with more petting. 

"Now," Marian says to him, standing. "What do you say we go find the rest?"

Cú barks once, turns in a tight circle, and runs off toward the obelisk; for a mad second, she wonders if he's somehow caught their scent, but then several feet short of the obelisk, he just disappears. 

" _Cú!_ " Marian calls desperately, but there's no response; when she searches the whole island again, he's nowhere to be found. Cú is gone. 

She stands for a long moment with her eyes closed and her fist pressed to her mouth to tamp down the maddening, slippery grief. She can do nothing but hope that his disappearing act means that he's awake and not dead. 

She slaps her hand onto the obelisk and flings herself to the next island, exactly the same as the first. She searches what seems like the entire island until she realizes that she missed a small opening between two outcroppings and slips through to find Leliana on her knees praying to an altar with a elderly, robed Chantry Mother by her side. She doesn't seem to see the Fade as it is, or notice Marian at all.

The words of the Chant are so familiar, even comforting, and Marian closes her eyes, just for a second, to pretend that they're for her, for her father and her family. Then she feels guilty for taking what doesn't belong to her. "Leliana?" she asks hesitantly.

Leliana breaks off mid-prayer, raising her head to look at Marian in surprise. The Revered Mother turns too, and fixes Marian with a glare. "What? Who are you?" Leliana asks.

Marian's heart sinks. Cú had known who she was. She'd never dreamed that the others wouldn't. Wynne is likely enough to trust another mage, at least a little, and she thinks Alistair will probably respond to the Grey Warden uniform she bears, but Leliana has no reason to listen to her at all.

"I beg you, do not interrupt the girl's meditations," the Revered Mother says to Marian. She can only assume that the Mother is the sloth demon's creature. 

"Revered Mother, I do not know this person," Leliana says, confused, distressed. She stands then and Marian looks her over. She doesn't look to be hurt, but there's a strange, hazy look in her eyes.

"Don't you recognize me?" Marian asks, pleading. "At all?"

"I'm sorry," Leliana says, studying her face with care. She shakes her head a little, like someone trying to dismiss an unpleasant thought. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Marian tries reminding her of the dagger training around the campfire just last night, Redcliffe, Alistair and the others, anything she can think of, but nothing seems to get through the cloudy, almost drugged state of mind that's keeping her there until Marian brings up Lothering and the chantry there. 

"You left for a reason," Marian says. No matter what she thinks of Leliana's vision, Leliana had believed in it so strongly that she'd left the Chantry to fight an impossible battle. 

"I – " Leliana touches her mouth, taking a step toward Marian. She looks to be thinking hard, and Marian thinks – hopes – that she can see Leliana's eyes growing clearer. "I remember," she says after a long moment. "There was a sign..." She presses her hand to her face, hard, as if that will help her remember.

"Leliana," the Revered Mother says in a scold. "We have discussed this _sign_ of yours. The Maker does not care to interfere in the affairs of mortals. This vision was likely the work of demons."

"No," Leliana says, dropping her hand. She is far more _present_ than before, even if she still doesn't seem to recognize Marian, and the haze is nearly gone. She stands straighter and lifts her chin, speaking with bright certainty instead of the confusion of before. "The Maker cares for us. I believe He misses His wayward children as much as we miss Him. My vision may not be from him, but it guides me to do what is right, and _my_ Revered Mother knew this." She shakes her head. "I don't know who you are, but you are _not_ her."

"We should go," Marian says to Leliana, ignoring _it_ completely. She needs to get Leliana away from the creature now, because if it reacts the way the thing in her dream did, then Leliana is too close for comfort. It could be on her in a second. 

"Yes," Leliana agrees, examining Marian thoughtfully. "Let us leave. My head has not yet cleared, but you are... familiar." Marian smiles gratefully at her and she smiles back.

"You are going nowhere, girl. I will not permit it," the thing says, harsh and demanding, and reaches out with a hand that is suddenly not quite as human as it was, with long fingers and longer claws – 

Leliana gasps, throwing herself away from the thing and into a backward somersault, coming up on her feet with daggers already in hand. "What is _that_?" she demands, her voice high and tight.

"I don't know," Marian answers, unslinging her staff. 

They despatch it handily enough between the two of them. "Holy Maker!" Leliana says, breathless from the fight and not a little green in the face. "She was a..."

"A demon," Marian supplies, stowing her staff away and approaching Leliana cautiously. She doesn't know if Leliana is going to disappear the way Cú had, and Leliana still doesn't seem to recognize her. "Are you all right?"

"My head feels heavy, like I've just woken up from a terrible nightmare," Leliana says, shaking her head again. The fog is almost gone from her eyes. She stows her blades and takes a breath, and then between that moment and the next, Leliana is plucked from existence so neatly that Marian doesn't even see her go. 

_Shit_. Marian puts her staff away, suddenly _furious_ , and stalks back to the obelisk, slapping it so hard that her palm stings. She's going to find each and every one of her friends, and rescue them and anyone else she can find, and then she's going to find the demon and _set it on fire_. 

Wynne is much easier to find on this new island, but what Marian finds gives her pause. She's surrounded by bodies, all dressed in the so-familiar Circle apprentice robes, and Wynne keeps turning, looking between them with heartbroken devastation writ large on her face. 

Marian swallows. "Wynne?" she asks, hesitant. She doesn't see anyone who could be the demon here, and she doesn't know what that means. 

"I failed them," Wynne says, stripped down to naked pain. She sighs, closing her eyes. "Maker forgive me, I failed them all."

One of the bodies looks a little bit like Kinnon, Wynne's apprentice who failed his Harrowing – and hadn't Marian thrown that in her face at Ostagar? The slow burn of shame is only what Marian deserves, she decides. "They're not real, Wynne. This is just a dream," she says, speaking softly to avoid startling Wynne. She looks at the bodies again. "A nightmare, really."

Wynne looks over, curiously unsurprised to see her, though Marian supposes that if Wynne recognizes her, it wouldn't break the illusion; she fits into this sort of dream. She was an apprentice of the Circle, after all. The only difference between her and the bodies is that she's alive and breathing. "They died and I did not stop it," Wynne tells her. It's clear that means something just from the way she speaks, slow and bitter and lifeless. Does she feel more responsible for failed Harrowings than she'd let on at Ostagar? 

"But this isn't _real_ ," Marian says, trying again to reach her, to make her understand. She moves closer, picking her path over one of the bodies.

Wynne turns a sharp look on her. It takes more effort than she'd like to suppress the automatic apology. "How can I disbelieve what I see, what I hear and smell and feel? Death... Can you not see it? It's all around us," Wynne says, hopeless, defeated. She returns her attention to the bodies as if they're magnetized, like they've a hold on her they won't release.

_Oh_. 

In hindsight, it's infuriating how long it's taken her to spot the demon's creatures here. Marian prides herself on being intelligent and sharp of eye, in the way of intelligent people everywhere, and since she'd left the tower, the world seems intent on proving to her that her mind doesn't count for as much as she thinks it does.

"There's still time to save the Circle," Marian says.

She's not sure Wynne even hears her. "Why was I spared, if not to help them? What use is my life now that I have failed in the task that was given me?" Wynne turns her back on Marian. "Leave me to my grief," Wynne says distantly. "I shall bury their bones, scatter their ashes to the four winds, and mourn their passing till I too am dead."

" _No_ ," Marian snaps, infuriated by her apathy, lunging forward to take Wynne's shoulder and shake it hard. "Maker, wake _up_! Don't you recognize the Fade when you're in it?" The look Wynne turns onto Marian's hand on her shoulder could freeze a dragon, and Marian quickly drops it, but she's succeeded in getting Wynne's attention once again. 

"I had not considered that," Wynne says, looking around. Now that Marian's closer, she can see a little of the haze that had been in Leliana's eyes there in Wynne's eyes, too. It seems to be characteristic of the mental confusion that they're feeling, that Wynne is showing now. She's frowning, her brows drawn together. "I have always had an affinity for the Fade, and I assumed I would be able to recognize it." She passes one hand over her face. "It is... difficult... to focus. It feels as though something is... stopping me from concentrating. I have never had so much trouble..."

"But try," Marian urges her, ducking her head a little to look Wynne in the eyes. "It's _important_." She can't believe they've remained unmolested by the demon for so long. They've wasted too much time already; for all she knows, the templars from Denerim are here already. They have to hurry.

Wynne lowers her hand, studying Marian intently. Slowly, she nods. "Perhaps... some time away from this place will help me think clearly."

Marian can't help the relieved breath she takes then. "That sounds like a good idea," she agrees.

Wynne suddenly looks away then, horrified eyes locked on something behind Marian. _Behind_ her can only mean – 

She spins, backing toward Wynne, as the bodies on the ground begin to move, groaning, slowly getting to their feet. 

"Don't leave us, Wynne," one of the apprentices begs, reaching for her. "We don't want to be alone."

Marian spins fire from her hands, setting two of them aflame before she takes down her staff and lays into the rest. After a shocked moment, Wynne joins her, determined and fierce. It's her imagination, or perhaps it's the Fade, but there's something of an aura about Wynne, something more felt or perhaps heard than seen, a brightness, a subtle pressure. It flares when she's using magic. No doubt it's down to casting spells here in the Fade itself. Perhaps the same could be said about her, and she just can't see it. 

When they're done, Marian puts away her staff and eyes Wynne cautiously. She's still no idea whether Wynne recognizes her or not, and she doesn't want to get too close in case the demon confuses her into thinking Marian's an enemy. She looks all right, though.

"Is it over?" Wynne asks, looking around. "Thank the Maker – "

Then she's gone, just like Leliana and Cú, and Marian swears viciously. 

There's only Alistair left, so Marian picks the last island in the chain and puts her hand on the obelisk.

There's just one path, so she follows it down and around and back up, hating the Fade with every step she takes, until she finds Alistair happily chatting with a redhead and surrounded by laughing, playing children. 

_This_ is what the demon is trapping him with: dreams of a wife, children, a family? Two of the children run by her, one threatening the other with a toy, and Marian watches them go for a moment, remembering when Bethy and Carver were that age, thinking slugs were the height of humor... Shaking off her own memories, she turns back to Alistair and the woman and takes a moment to just watch, despite the fact that she'd just finished telling herself that there is no time for delay, that the templars are coming and their bodies are dying. In fact, she can't look away. Alistair is happier than she's ever seen him, content smile, glowing eyes, and all. He's talking with his hands and laughing at everything. A small, unreasonable part of her is jealous that she has no role in his dream, that she can't make him this happy, but it's easily ignored. The larger part of her is simply unwilling to interrupt. She doesn't want to force him to face reality.

But she knows she must. 

Marian takes a steadying breath and walks out to meet them. She's no doubt that his wife is the demon in this place. She'd been able to persuade Leliana and Wynne that what they were seeing wasn't real, but talking Alistair out of this one is going to be tricky.

She hadn't thought it possible, but when he catches sight of her, he grins wider, even more brightly. He looks absolutely _delighted_ she's here. "Marian!" he says cheerfully. "It's great to see you – I was just thinking about you, isn't that a marvelous coincidence?"

At first Marian's just surprised that he knows who she is, but then – he was thinking about her? What does that mean? If this dream is supposed to lull him into complacency, why does he need thoughts of _her_? 

Alistair continues, as if he hasn't turned her worldview upside down enough, and gestures to the red-haired woman beside him. "Goldanna, this is Marian. Marian, this is my sister, Goldanna." He laughs. "These are her children, and there's more about somewhere."

His _sister_? 

Goldanna bows politely, smiling, and Marian's so shocked that she bows back, despite knowing exactly what the woman is. 

Marian can't believe she just bowed to a fucking demon. She hopes Alistair won't remember this. She hopes _she_ won't remember this.

If Goldanna's meant to be his sister... Marian looks around, seeing all the children in a new light: Alistair's sister, Alistair's nieces and nephews... his family. It doesn't take much to connect that with his love for Arl Eamon, and the way he talked about the fellowship of the Wardens. All he wants is a family, any family, that he can call his own. 

Oh, _Alistair_.

She can't bear the idea of him so desperately searching for somewhere to belong. But it's not the time, nor the place, for her urge to comfort, no matter how much she wants to. 

She has to get him out of here. The key seems to be breaking the illusion.

"You look so happy," she says instead.

"I am," Alistair says, watching the children playing. He laughs when one of them dramatically falls backward, playing dead. "I'm happier than I've been my entire life. Isn't that strange?" His face is so soft, so open that it hurts. "I thought being a Grey Warden would make me happy, but it didn't." Only then does he look at her with a content smile. "This does."

Marian _hates_ this.

Goldanna laughs, throwing her arm around Alistair's waist. Marian bites back her instinctive protest. Alistair won't understand, not yet. "I'm overjoyed to have my little brother back. I'll never let him out of my sight again!"

_Oh, because_ that's _not creepy at all._

"Alistair, can I have a word?" Marian asks. Maybe if she gets him away from the thing – 

"I know what you're going to ask," Alistair says, his face closing down. "And I... don't think I'll be coming." He looks away from her. "I don't want to spend my life fighting, only to end up dead in a pit along with rotting darkspawn corpses."

That stings more than a little. She doesn't have the right to be angry, Marian reminds herself. This is just a dream to him, a dream wherein she probably represents the Wardens to him. And in truth, if she'd had the choice, she wouldn't have joined the Wardens either. _But you didn't choose the fantasy over the reality_ , that petty, jealous part of her says. _I also knew about the demon_ , she reminds herself. _It's not abandonment if he doesn't know he's doing it._

It still hurts, though.

"Well, Alistair," Goldanna says, though she's looking at Marian as she says it. Goldanna's got a smile on her face, wide and delighted and just a little bit smug, that makes Marian want to rip her face off. "Will your friend be staying for dinner?"

Alistair instantly lights up, turning back to Marian with a grin. "Say you'll stay," he begs. "Goldanna's a great cook. Maybe she'll make her mince pie. You can, can't you?" he asks the creature.

"Of course, dear brother. _Anything_ for you," Goldanna says, saccharine-sweet.

"I can't stay," Marian says, wary of coming directly at the subject of the demon. "And Alistair, it's important that you come, too."

If he weren't a grown man, Marian would call his expression a pout. "You're acting really strangely," he says sulkily. 

Enough is enough. " _Alistair_!" Marian says, taking him by the arm and shaking him. He frowns, offended, and starts to speak, but she shakes her head and thanks be to the Maker, he stops to listen. "Alistair, think about how you got here; I mean really _think_."

He sighs. "All right, if it makes you happy. I..." He shakes his head in a tight little movement, the way people do to shake off flies, his voice going a little distant as his eyebrows come down in confusion. "It's a little fuzzy, that's strange..."

The thing playing his sister laughs brightly and tugs at his elbow. "Alistair, come and have some tea."

"No," Alistair says, not even looking at her. "Wait... I remember a tower. The Circle... it was under attack..." He stops there. Marian could _scream_ – for him to remember so much, and not the crucial point that will allow him to believe her when she tells him what's happening is killing her. "There were demons. That's all I really remember."

_Thank Andraste and the Maker._ "One of the demons caught us," Marian says, watching his face for... something. She doesn't really know what. "We're trapped in the Fade."

He stares at her, gobsmacked. "Are you saying... this is a – a dream? But it's so real..." 

He doesn't want to believe it, and Maker knows she doesn't blame him. How can she? She's been through exactly the same thing. 

"I know," she says, heart aching for him. "And I'm so sorry, but you can't stay here, Alistair."

"Something doesn't feel quite right here," Alistair says, staring at her, so confused. "I... think I have to go."

The thing tightens its grasp on Alistair's elbow, its voice now that of the demon's, snarling at them. " _No_ ," it growls. "He is _ours_ , and I would rather see him dead than free!"

For all his confusion, Alistair's reaction is immediate and unerring; he slams his whole body into the thing, knocking her off her feet and forcing her to let go of his elbow, and while Marian is still fumbling her staff down off her back he draws his sword and cuts the thing's head off. 

And then the children swarm them from every side. Marian's never going to be able to forget slaughtering all these children, _never_ , no matter how much she might want to, and she vows that someone will pay dearly for forcing her to do all the things she's done today. 

When it's done, Alistair looks around, slowly sheathing his sword and hanging up his shield. "I can't believe it," he says unhappily. "How did I not see this earlier?"

Marian bites her lip, unsure of what to do, what to say. "It fooled me, too," she offers.

That brings his head around fast, staring at her in surprise and concern. "Are you – " He pauses, like he can't figure out how to ask. 

She shakes her head. "I'm all right," she says. It's a lie, but it feels like it won't always be one, and that's enough for now. She eyes him. "Are _you_?"

He laughs, but it sounds hollow. "Same," he says, looking at the bodies. "Ah, well. Try not to tell everyone how easily I was fooled, eh?"

Before she can promise, Alistair is gone, snatched out of existence before her very eyes. 

She is so _sick_ of this. 

It's finally time for the central island, the one that's been shielded this entire time, the one that she fully expects to find the demon on. 

She's right.

It offers her one more chance to go back to her father, back to her family, but now she's riding on a wave of righteous anger and her answer is lightning to the face. Her friends shimmer into view beside her, talking for all the world like she's the one who disappeared instead of them, and while she's so, so grateful that they're alive and safe and here with her, that doesn't even touch the well of her fury.

The fight is rather a letdown after that. When they're staring down at the demon's body, Niall says behind her, "You defeated the demon. I never thought..." He laughs, delighted. "I never expected you to free yourself, to free us both."

Marian turns, unsurprised to see him. Well, maybe she is, a little. How'd he get to the right obelisks without shapeshifting? 

Niall sobers and comes a little closer. "Listen," he says. "When you return, take the Litany of Adralla from my..." He swallows once. "From my body. It will protect you from the worst of the blood magic."

"From your _body_?" Marian repeats, completely confused.

Niall nods. "I cannot go with you. I have been here far too long. For you, it will have been an afternoon's nap. Your body won't have wasted away in the real world while your spirit lay in the hands of a demon." 

Marian stares at him, horrified. "You think you're going to _die_ when we break this spell?"

"Every minute I was here, the sloth demon was feeding off me, using my life to fuel the nightmares of this realm," Niall says. Now that she looks, he's pale and too thin, with huge circles under his eyes that in the real world would have meant he hadn't been sleeping or eating. Here, she's afraid to think of what it means. "There is so little of me left... I was never meant to save the Circle, or even survive its troubles." He shakes his head. "I am dying. It is as simple as that."

"We must be able to do _something_ ," Marian says desperately, darting a look at Wynne, who looks away. That's answer enough. It's just that Marian doesn't want to accept it.

Marian promises to take the Litany and after that, Niall seems to fade away, as if that were the only thing keeping him here. The idea of him stuck in a nightmare powered by his own life force, doomed to only watch and wait for uncertain death, is so upsetting that Marian thinks she might be sick.

The Fade around them grows dim and then dark... 

In the real world, Marian wakes up.


	23. The Litany

Marian forces herself to her feet, but when she looks around the room, the demon is gone. A second glance shows her its body hidden behind the statue. Whatever they'd done in the Fade has taken care of it, and that's good enough.

The others get to their feet in their own time, though Alistair avoids looking at her, instead checking that his armor and weapons are where he left them. Wynne and Leliana are sober and thoughtful, but not embarrassed, and of course Cú has no cares in the world, instantly coming to her hand and panting happily when she speaks to him. 

She doesn't know what she'd do without Cú. He is constantly by her side, strong and free and loving her as if it were the obvious thing to do, and she leans on him more than she'll ever admit.

They may have had a nap, but it wasn't quite restful, so Marian decrees another quick stop while she sets her teeth and moves to Niall's side. He's so freshly dead that he's still warm, and it's only the fact that the demon is already dead that keeps her from killing it all over again. It doesn't seem _fair_ the way it could trap someone in their own mind and use their own life force to keep them there; it's not that she expects the world to be a fair and just place, but the idea of a situation without options, without a way out, is anathema to her.

"Maker take you to his side," she says to him, prays for him, and it is little enough, but at the same time it is all she can do. She takes the Litany from his hand and leaves him dead on the floor, another person she couldn't save.

The Litany is nothing but a small, golden book, heavy in her hand. She turns the pages, reading quickly, and has the invocation memorized before their rest period is up. 

Is this all there is to it? It can't be, otherwise blood magic would be nothing to fear, but she can't find any other instructions. She presses her lips together into a thin line, irritated and worried in equal measure, and tucks the book away in her belt. She may need it soon.

She'd been brought this way for her Harrowing, so she knows that there are three more rooms on this floor, hidden behind the rest, and while she thinks she's prepared for whatever enemies they hold she swiftly finds that she's wrong.

" _Drakes_?" she says incredulously when they're all dead, staring at their bodies on the ground. Cú nudges one of the corpses with his nose, and seems disappointed when it's still dead. 

"Maybe the templars were into drake racing," Alistair says with a shrug, eyeing the bodies when he's finished wiping the blood off his sword.

"We should hurry," Wynne says, her urgency palpable at this point, and Marian nods, falling in behind Alistair. They advance down the hall step by step, fighting abominations the whole way, until they reach the last little room on this floor. 

It's full to the bursting of that organic grossness, huge, foul sacs and dripping globules lining the walls, outgrowths slowly colonizing the pillars, feelers tracing their way across the ceiling. In the middle, there's a clear space that leads to the staircase to the Harrowing chambers. There's a force field in that space, and inside is a templar on his knees, his forehead pressed to the floor, praying under his breath, desperate and heart-wrenching. 

It's Cullen. She'd recognize that hair anywhere.

Marian races over, dropping to her knees just outside of the force field, but when she touches it hesitantly it spits at her. She swears, shaking her hand to get the feeling back in her fingers. Wynne is circling around the edges, probing it with her magic. 

Cullen looks up when she speaks, and she doesn't know what to expect, but it's not the weary determination that she sees before he bends back to his clasped hands. "This trick again?" he asks, so tired, so agonized, that she tries to reach for him all unthinking and swears when she shocks herself on the field _again_. Cullen shakes his head. "I know what you are," he says, and now there's disgust. "It won't work. I will stay strong..."

What have they _done_ to him? 

"Cullen, it's _me_ ," Marian says, distressed. "Don't you know me?"

"Only too well," he mutters. 

_What?_

"How far they must have delved into my thoughts..."

"I've never seen anything like this cage," Wynne says, her eyes narrowed, finishing her circuit of the field at Marian's side. "But the boy is exhausted. Rest easy," she says to Cullen, like the grandmother she wishes she had. "Help is here."

"Enough visions," Cullen groans into his hands. "If anything in you is human, kill me now and stop this game." 

She doesn't know what they've done to him. In truth, she doesn't want to. 

Leliana crouches on Marian's other side, regarding Cullen with shaken pity. "He's delirious," she says. "He's been tortured, and probably denied food and water. I can tell." 

Marian glances at her, wondering how she knows that, but it's not important right now. Later. She'll think about it later, along with everything else, when she has time. 

Leliana twists, digging in one of the packs. "I have a skin – "

Cullen scrambles several feet backward in panicked reaction. "Don't _touch_ me! Stay away!" He folds himself back into prayer almost immediately, speaking faster as if to make up for his lapse. "Sifting through my thoughts... tempting me with the one thing I always wanted but could never have... Using my shame against me... my ill-advised infatuation with _her_ , a mage of all things – " Despite herself, she can feel herself turning beet-red. Alistair is _right there_ – she can feel his eyes on her back – and so is Wynne, and there aren't two people in the world she'd want to hear this less. Marian balls her hands into fists on her thighs and prays for patience. She's not embarrassed, because there's nothing for her to be ashamed of, but the heat climbing up her neck is unwelcome. She hadn't realized his feelings ran so deep. She hadn't thought of how it must seem to him, to be a templar obsessed with a mage under his sword. "I am so _tired_ of these cruel jokes, these tricks..."

She hadn't thought her heart whole enough to break again today, but it does now, for Cullen who is so tired, so agonized and hurt. 

"Cullen," she says, doing everything she can to make herself smaller, less of a threat. "This isn't a trick. It's really me. I came back to help."

"Silence!" he screams at her, trailing off into a gasping sob as he brings himself back under control. She digs her nails into her palms, searching for the self-control not to reach out to him again. "I'll not listen to anything you have to say. _Begone_!"

He closes his eyes, returning to his prayer with new fervor and desperation, muttering the Chant under his breath. She can just make out the words. " _Guide me through the blackest nights_ ," he says.

She knows this one. " _Steel my heart against the temptations of the wicked_ ," she says in unison with him.

That makes him look up again, and the look he fixes on her is thoroughly shocked. "You're still here? But that's always worked before," he says, stunned. "I closed my eyes, but you are still here when I open them." 

"Because I'm real," she says, her brow furrowed in concern.

He looks at her then, and for the first time he's really looking at _her_ , not whatever nightmares have taken root in his mind. He takes in her companions, too, his eyes lingering on Wynne, narrowed and judgemental, before coming back to her. "Don't blame me for being cautious," Cullen says, his voice tired, hoarse now, like he's been screaming. "The voices, the images, they were so real..." 

Marian shakes her head tightly. She'd never dream of blaming him for that – not when she has her own trauma she's not anxious to explain to anyone.

"Why did you return to the tower?" Cullen asks, almost glaring at her, accusatory, daring her to say something wrong. He stands, and she doesn't like the way he looks down at her from height, so she gets to her feet too, stepping back from the edge of the force field. "How did you survive?"

"If you mean Ostagar, Alistair saved my life," Marian says, glancing over her shoulder at Alistair. He frowns at her, and she shakes her head in the smallest gesture she can manage before turning back around. She doesn't want to get into the details, which are irrelevant and would include Morrigan in any version of the story; and in any case, what she said is just as true, if only metaphorically. "I came back because the Wardens require the Circle's aid," Marian says slowly, carefully, picking her words. "We have treaties – "

"Good," Cullen interrupts, clearly not listening to her, rough and angry. "Kill Uldred. Kill them all for what they've done. They caged us like _animals_ , looked for ways to break us; I'm the only one left." He takes a breath, and while it's shaky and there's still something _wrong_ with his eyes, he appears calmer, and yet still sad, still haunted. "They turned some into monsters," he says softly. "There was nothing I could do." He must mean the other templars, the ones she's seen no sign of. She crunches numbers in her head, weighing the population of the Tower against the number of blood mages, mind-controlled templars, and abominations they'd fought on the way up, and she still comes up wanting. How many can still be alive up there?

Marian wants to give Cullen time, and space, and respect the memory of his dead friends. There just isn't _time_ , for any of it. _Damn_ Greagoir and his fucking reactionary – 

She stops herself. That, too, is a thought for another time.

"Where are Irving and the others?" she asks, urgent now.

"What others? What are you _talking_ about?" Cullen demands impatiently, pounding his fist against his thigh so gently that his gauntlet only makes a rhythmic clanging against his fauld. Marian's not even sure he knows he's doing it. 

She'd known a man named Ser Cullen, smiled at him, teased him, laughed with him, had even kissed him on the cheek once. That man is dead now, and even if this man before her recovers from the monstrous thing that's been done to him, the man she knew won't ever come back.

"Irving and the other mages who fought Uldred," Wynne explains. "Where are they?"

Cullen glances at the stairs to the Harrowing chamber out of the corner of his eye, but clearly won't turn any further. She doesn't know if he can't bear to look at it, or if he won't turn away from her, the threat in front of him. "They are in the Harrowing Chamber," he says, and the belligerence has gone again from his voice, leaving only pain and the memory of pain. "The sounds coming out from there – oh, _Maker_ – " He traces the Maker's Circle on his chest.

"Then we must hurry," Wynne says to Marian, imploring, and Marian nods, gesturing for Alistair to precede her as she knows he must. 

Cullen draws her attention back to him, and when she turns her head, he's stepped even closer to the field than before, his fists clenched. Alistair pauses on the first step of the stairs. "You _can't_ save them," Cullen says raggedly. "You don't know what they've become."

"If you know something, then _tell_ me," Marian says, imploring. 

He swallows. "They've been surrounded by blood mages whose wicked fingers snake into your mind and corrupt your thoughts," Cullen says, low and fast. Marian thinks it's the only way he could get it out at all; he's near shaking now, his fists clenched tight, but he's so pale and thin that it's a wonder he's the energy for so much vitriol.

Alistair and Wynne are conferring softly behind her, and Leliana hasn't said a word to anyone since whatever memory prompted her to speak up about Cullen's treatment, but Marian can't look away from Cullen. "Are you saying that _everyone_ up there is an abomination?" she asks.

She can't believe that. For all his flaws, Irving is an exceptionally strong mage with an equally strong will, and he knows the dangers. 

Cullen jerks his head to the side in what Marian thinks is supposed to be a shake of his head. He's vibrating nearly out of control now. "I am saying that to ensure this mess is truly over, to guarantee that no abominations or blood mages live, you must kill everyone up there. A thorough cleansing." 

Marian forgets how to breathe for a moment. She'd trusted this man once with her very life – but her earlier thoughts about this new, broken man in front of her come back to her now. That man is dead. This man is just a damaged templar, and that's all. 

And any templar will advocate killing mages. 

It takes a certain amount of effort to keep her voice modulated and cool, to avoid unleashing her anger and pain and hurt on this man who does not deserve it. "You'll be safe enough here, Ser Cullen," she says, turning her head to nod at Alistair, who takes her silent hint and starts up the stairs again. Leliana and Wynne follow him, while Cú, as always, sticks close to her side. "We've cleared the Tower below. We won't be long."

She turns and takes the stairs two at a time, but she can't outrun Cullen's voice behind her, calling after her, rasping, angry and desperate. "You cannot tell maleficarum by sight! Just _one_ could – "

She shuts the door to the Harrowing chamber behind her, cutting Cullen off, and takes one long, shaking breath before she turns around. A mage she can only assume to be Uldred glances over his shoulder at them, grins sharp and wicked, and then just _dismisses_ them to turn his attention back to two abominations standing over a third, prone on the floor. 

Irving is there, bloodied and bruised but still alive, thank the Maker. There are some others with him, including her friend Rashmi, but their numbers are far too few to account for the missing population of the Circle. Her heart sinks; Lissette is nowhere to be found, and if she's not here...

The Harrowing Chamber is festooned with the glistening, wet sacs, the ones Marian's subconsciously come to think of as egg sacs. An infestation of this size requires either a long time to grow or a huge amount of... raw material. 

Marian bites her lip hard, brings her staff around; her companions are already there and ready, and they throw themselves at Uldred and his abominations. 

Her first shock is the flash and fog of Uldred changing form into – into she has no idea what, actually, something huge and fierce and deadly, as big as an ogre and twice as strong. It laughs at them, deep and menacing, and that reminds her of something – but then she and the others are hip deep in abominations, and she puts it aside for later. 

"Don't forget the Litany!" Wynne cries at her, and Marian wrestles it out of her belt so she'll have it when she needs it. The Litany can only be used at the moment blood magic is being cast, so she'll have to be accurate and she'll have to be quick, but most of all she'll have to be _observant_.

She flings a frantic force field at the thing that was Uldred before joining the others in laying into the abominations. They use the time as best they can, whittling down their enemies to one before Uldred finally cracks the barrier around him and rejoins the fight, huge fists swinging and just as dangerous on the backswing with elbow spikes the size of druffaloes. 

Cú rips the last abomination's throat out with his teeth and Uldred tries something on the captive mages, a pulse of something that Marian only catches the edges of and yet it still makes her feel grimy and revolting inside her mind.

"Use the Litany!" Wynne calls. Marian fumbles the incantation the first time, but she gets it right the next try and feels a different sort of pulse emanate directly from the book, something cleansing that negates Uldred's magic and leaves the air feeling curiously neutral, like a glass waiting to be filled. 

It hurts Uldred, too; he roars, not triumphant as before but agonized, and Marian narrows her eyes. " _Get him_ ," she says, so cold and angry at everything he's done to her and her friends and her lovers and classmates – and even those she'd hated didn't deserve this, _any_ of this. 

They resume the fight, Marian fighting with a passion that would surprise her if she weren't already full up on emotions right now, and after several rounds of the Litany, Leliana puts an arrow through Uldred's eye socket and directly into his brain and finally, _finally_ it's over.

Marian doesn't even pause to watch his body fall, instead racing around it and over to the captive mages. She unties Irving, and then Rashmi, turning her face to look at the damage – 

Rashmi slaps Marian so hard across the face that her head turns to the side. When she looks back, wounded, her brows drawn together, Rashmi bursts into tears. "Where have you _been_?" she demands between sobs, and Marian closes her eyes and gathers Rashmi in for a hug, avoiding her obvious injuries. That there are injuries not so obvious, Marian has no doubt. She doesn't know how to answer her, but luckily an answer doesn't seem to be required. 

Irving and Wynne confer in low tones, and then Irving comes over to her. "I was surprised to see you," he says, searching her face. "But I am glad you have returned." He looks around at the mages who have survived Uldred, the very few, and suddenly he looks so _old_ , older than Marian's ever seen him. She realizes that she has no idea how old he really is. He could be fifty, or he could be eighty, or anywhere in between. He's been the First Enchanter here a long time, and yet he never seems to age, like the political machinations he enjoys are a potion of youth.

This has done it, though. 

Irving sighs. "The Circle owes all of you a debt we will never be able to repay," he says.

Marian shakes her head. "Not for this," she says, and doesn't reply to Irving's questioning look. 

They take the mages back down through the quiet, empty Tower. Rashmi holds Marian's hand tightly the entire time, so tightly that the tips of her fingers turn quite blue, but letting go is out of the question. Marian is holding on just as hard. 

After they pass through the library Marian forces herself to let go, to let Petra take care of Rashmi, and she hugs them both before she accompanies Irving to Greagoir out in the foyer. She watches them greet each other with the genuine relief of real friendship, and again she wonders at even the possibility that they have feelings for each other other than jailor and prisoner.

It's not her problem nor her concern at the moment, and so she puts it aside. Cullen is there already, filling Greagoir's head with his poison, and the only surprise is that Greagoir asks for her opinion before slaughtering the mages out of hand. She can be honest when she says that she thinks the mages are safe, that they show no signs of blood magic. She expects to feel guilty at how much she wants that to be true, and yet she really, really doesn't.

After that, arranging for the Circles to honor their Blight treaty is _easy_. Marian finds herself thinking that it's too easy, that there's a catch she's missing, and reminds herself that the entire day has been that catch and then forces herself to put it out of her mind. Cullen is not as angry with her as she expected and in fact, seems almost calm about the way things have worked out. It worries her, or it would if she weren't so entirely done with this place. It's only a moment's extra work to arrange for a group of mages and a sufficient quantity of lyrium to be sent with her to Redcliffe and to accept Wynne's offer of a helping hand against the Blight, and then she is free.

The ride back across the lake is so, so quiet that it makes her ears ring. No one seems to feel up to breaking the heavy silence. 

After only a little searching, they locate Bodahn in the Spoiled Princess, and he's willing to pack up his wagon and meet them three leagues down the road in an old campsite where Marian had agreed to wait for the Circle mages accompanying them to Redcliffe. 

It's a long, slow, cold walk, one that gives her too much time to think and not enough to distract her. She doesn't want to relive today; it'll be bad enough when she sleeps.

She keeps ahead of the others, so they won't see her crying. 

It seems like they walk forever before they make camp, and when they do, the silence lingers. Alistair brings the rags and polish over, and they clean their armor in silence, broken only by their scale mail jangling and the spitting fire. Alistair keeps stealing glances at her, little things out of the corner of his eye, and she doesn't know why. Eventually she asks.

"Do you remember the dream?" he asks casually. He's very intent on grinding a deep nick out of the edge of his sword, giving him a great excuse not to look at her.

Marian thinks about lying to him, about telling him that she doesn't remember. She decides against it, not because she wants him not to know but because if she says that, she's acknowledging that it has power over her, a hold on her, and she won't do that. 

"I remember," she says, and nothing else. She wants to see where he's going with this. For lack of anything else to do, she takes up his shield and begins to wipe it clean in slow, rhythmic circles.

"So you saw..." He trails off like he doesn't want to say it out loud. 

Marian takes pity on him. "I won't tell anyone, if that's what you're worried about," she says. She doesn't think she's imagining the tension that leaves his shoulders, the line of his back, his neck when she says that. He _had_ been worried, and for what? "You haven't anything to be ashamed of, you know," Marian continues. She uses her thumbnail to scrape off a particularly stubborn bloodstain. "Mine was similar."

That doesn't seem to help. It almost prompts a question, though, something he immediately seems to think better of, by the tiny shake of his head and the way he firmly closes his mouth again after. She imagines he wants to know what her dream was, and he's restraining himself from asking.

She can feel the way her eyes are going soft around the edges, the little smile on her mouth that's happening quite without her permission, and she hastily looks down at her work before he looks at her again. But she can't quite extinguish the warm swell of affection in her heart.

Oh, she's in so much trouble.

But she can't quite bring herself to regret _that_ , either.

She can bend a little, she decides. "Do you remember in Lothering, I disappeared for a while?" 

That brings his head around fast. "Of course I do, I looked for you everywhere," he says, with the slightly injured tones of remembered indignation.

She thinks carefully about how she's going to word this next part. She doesn't want to lie to him any more, but for her sister's sake, she can't tell him the whole truth, either. "My family used to live in Lothering," she says in the end. "I found out there that my father died three years ago." 

She swallows down tears _again_. Marian is so tired of feeling this way, hurting this way, and she'd quite happily cut out her heart and set it on fire if it would help.

It probably wouldn't, though. 

"I'm sorry," he says, and while Alistair does look genuinely sympathetic, he also looks like a rabbit that's just turned around to see Cú, teeth bared and ready to pounce. He looks like he has no idea what to say to her and he's terrified that she's going to start crying any second.

Marian is surprised by her own laugh, and while it's creaky and rusty and weary, it still counts. She savors that for a minute, just the idea that there's something in her beside pain and the memory of pain. 

"That's what the demon tried to trap me with," Marian says. She expects it to hurt just as much as it had, but it's softer now, with duller edges. She doesn't understand the difference, but she's thankful for it. "My father was there, and we had a little farm. We were happy."

"But how did you figure it out?" Alistair asks, pressing her.

How _had_ she known? "Something wasn't right," Marian says, hopelessly vague. "It was perfect, but... something was missing." She pauses, trying to pinpoint what she meant, but she can't put it into words. "It was just _wrong_ , that's all, and eventually I worked it out. Something kept bothering me..." She trails off, looking over at his face, lit soft and glowing by the firelight, and only then does she realize what she'd been missing in the Fade, _who_ she'd been missing. It settles into her like she's known it all along, and maybe she has. It would explain a lot. 

_Try not to tell everyone how easily fooled I was_ , he'd said. She thinks that it's not about what she saw, which was the deepest, most secret desire of his heart, but that he was fool enough to believe that it was real and that he could have it.

It takes Alistair more than a little while to respond, and it sounds like he's doing his best not to sound as self-deprecating as she knows he can be when he does. "I'm guessing you did your own rescuing, though."

Marian laughs. It sounds wrong even to her own ears, and she can't imagine how it sounds to him. "It helps that I knew my father was dead," she says. She looks up at him only to find he's staring at her; that's when she knows for certain that he'll do his feeble best to comfort her and then she'll cry and she just _can't_. She searches for something else to talk about, _anything_ else, and hits on something she'd wanted to know. "So, do you really have a sister?" Marian asks, making no attempt to hide her changing of the subject.

Alistair raises both eyebrows, but he lets her have her way, shrugging and going back to his sword and whetstone. "Half-sister, actually," he says, bringing his sword up to sight along the blade. He finally seems satisfied with the edge and turns it over to check the other side. "I told you about my mother, right? She was a servant at Redcliffe Castle, and she had a daughter... only I never knew about her," he says. "I don't think she knew about me, either. They kept my birth a secret. But when I became a Grey Warden I did some checking, and, well..." He looks up at her, and she marvels again that he lets himself be so vulnerable with her. She could cut him to the bone with one cruel word; he's given her plenty of ammunition, and she thinks that they're friends now, even if they weren't before. He'd let her do whatever she wanted. She doesn't want to, but she _could_.

She's secure enough in herself to acknowledge the way the idea lights her up inside. 

"She's in Denerim," he says simply. "She's still alive."

"We'll probably end up in Denerim eventually if we keep going this way," Marian points out. "Do you want to look her up?"

Alistair hesitates for a long moment, watching the whetstone and sword in his hands like they hold all the answers. "She's the only real family I have left, the only family not also mixed up in the whole royal thing," he says eventually. "I've just been thinking... maybe it's time I went to see her. With the Blight coming and everything, I don't know if I'll ever get another chance. Maybe I can help her, warn her about the danger, I don't know." He looks at her, his hands still, and as the seconds go by, she realizes that he's actually looking to her for an answer, that he really wouldn't go if she thought it sounded like a bad idea.

That tiny little jealous part of her tries to point out that Alistair had chosen his sister over the Wardens in his dream, that he might do it again, that she really can't do this without him, but she brushes that away. Alistair would never abandon them in the waking world. She's ashamed of herself for even _thinking_ it.

"Alistair," Marian says firmly. "You should see your sister." 

The way his face lights up, pleased and almost surprised, makes her smile, and that's a gift, too, after the day they've had. "Thanks," he says with a grin. "I appreciate that. If something happened to her and I never went to at least see her, I don't know if I could forgive myself."

"Remind me whenever we work our way out there," Marian says, though she's fairly sure she won't forget. She has a constantly updated list of errands that need running in her mind, and she checks it often. 

"Will you..." Alistair trails off, closing his mouth and busying himself with the polish. 

Marian pokes him with his own shield, and he turns a startled look on her. She's done with it, so she hands it over and pins him with a look. "Just ask me. You'll never know if you don't." She's never seen the _point_ of keeping questions hidden inside. She wants to know everything, and even if that's impossible, she's still going to try. Questions are her tools. She _likes_ questions.

He gives her a _look_ , narrowed eyes, flat mouth, and all, but then he relents. "I suppose you're right," he says. "Will you come with me when I go to see her?"

It surprises her, not that he'd want some kind of emotional backup, but that he wants it to be _her_. There's the kind of situational friends that she'd thought he thought they were, and then there's the kind of real friends that trust each other. He trusts her. She's finding it hard to believe, but she'd like to. It feels good. 

"If you'd like me to, of course I will," Marian says, watching him intently. He grins at her, pleased, and she smiles back.


	24. The Assassin

Marian wakes the next morning in a foul mood. She'd tossed and turned most of the night, with nightmares that ranged from openly horrible to secretly oppressive, with silent, creeping horrors waiting for her around every corner. She assigns herself, Cú, and Alistair the role of forward scout, which is hardly necessary for a group consisting of battle mages and her companions, but it gets her away from the rest and that's going to have to do.

Alistair seems to sense her mood and leaves Marian to her thoughts, for which she's grateful in a distant sort of way. 

They move steadily south down the ravaged remains of the Imperial Highway, following the path they'd taken to get to the Circle. Bodahn's cart cannot cross the marshland shortcut, so he leaves them then, the mages with him, and he and Irving promise to meet her in Redcliffe. 

Wynne and Leliana join them and they push on, through the marshes and over the Drakon. They reach the road again soon after and their pace increases. They should make Redcliffe before nightfall, she thinks, and assuming Connor hasn't murdered Morrigan and Sten both and gone on the rampage and there isn't some other, entirely new catastrophe she needs to solve, they might sleep in real beds tonight. The mages should arrive with Bodahn in the morning and then they can finally end this blighted nightmare, once and for all. 

They turn a corner in the path around some boulders and a woman in plain peasant clothes flies at them. "Oh, thank the Maker," she gasps, catching herself before she bowls Marian over. "We need help. They attacked the wagon, _please_ help us!" she begs, beginning to back away even though they haven't answered. "Follow me!" The woman turns and runs down the road, disappearing around a bend before Marian can call her back. She glances at the others, but they're already taking out their weapons and only Alistair looks back at her and shrugs. 

They follow her at a jog down the road and around the bend; Marian is running through scenarios in her mind. She only hopes it's bandits and not darkspawn, because if it is, they'll have to go back for Bodahn and the mages. They can't just leave the mages to their own defense, not against darkspawn. 

When they round the bend, the woman is walking right up to a tattooed elf in leathers. _Bandits, then, but... what is she_ doing _?_ Marian wonders, readying her staff for a rescue.

But something is wrong. 

Hadn't the woman said _they_? There's no one here but her and the elf. Even if he's with her, where's the things she said attacked them?

The elf nods at the woman, who stands aside, and then smiles at Marian and makes a gesture she doesn't understand. It must have been a signal, because just that quickly they're surrounded by mercenaries who'd popped out of the empty wagons, from behind trees and rocks and one or two out of the very ground itself. There are four or five archers on the berms surrounding them. This is not a good situation.

Only the creaking above her head warns her to look up. There's a huge, old, dead tree anchoring the berm that edges the road to her left, but now it's leaning over her precariously, and a mercenary behind it gives it the final push – 

Alistair barrels into her from behind, knocking her forward to fall flat on her face even as the tree smashes on the ground behind her. 

_Ow._

Marian gets her hands under her to push herself up. She can see Alistair from here, sprawled several feet to her right, and she can hear Cú ramping up from a growl into the wet, ripping canvas of his true battle rage, but it takes a look over her shoulder to make sure that Leliana and Wynne are all right. They're cut off from Marian by the remains of the tree trunk.

She scrambles to her feet. Beside her, Alistair is doing the same. She'd dropped her staff again, and she glances at Alistair, then at the staff. He nods – at least _he'd_ kept hold of his fucking weapons, she notes jealously – and she dives for it.

Behind her, someone yells, "The Grey Wardens die here!"

But then Marian comes up with her staff in her hands, and Leliana's arrows are singing and Wynne's magic crackles through the air like a thunderstorm, and Alistair has already cracked someone's skull with his shield, and Cú has someone's hamstring between his teeth. 

Her friends really are terrifyingly competent.

It goes poorly for the mercenaries, very quickly, and eventually Alistair's got the elf down, the tip of his sword in the elf's back while Leliana picks off the last of the archers on the berm. Then there's silence. 

"No one move," Leliana says, picking her way over the tree trunk and then helping Wynne to do the same. "I can see traps right ahead."

She disarms them one at a time, and then when she's done, Marian joins Alistair and Cú while Leliana and Wynne check the bodies. Wynne is proving a huge help, uncomplaining when it comes to the harsher realities of their life, and her presence frees Marian to fight as she prefers to, with fire and ice and lightning instead of supporting and healing from the rear. 

"This one seemed like the leader," Alistair says to her, nodding at the elf. "Want to talk to him?"

After a moment of consideration, she nods. "I think so, yes," she says. "We should probably find out who hired him." She holds her staff in both hands and spins up her frost spell, but keeps the spell just below the surface, ready for anything. 

Alistair removes his sword from the elf's spine and nudges him with a huge, heavy boot. He groans, rolling over onto his back and wincing. "Wh..." He groans again, and Marian looks him over skeptically, but he is, in fact, bleeding from a rather serious wound in his stomach. She knows that kind of wound is almost always fatal unless a mage gets to him with a healing spell in time, and more importantly, he's probably not going to feel like moving. The elf props himself up on an elbow, prompting another moan. "What? I..." he says, finally opening his eyes. It takes him a moment to focus, his eyes first drifting over Alistair's legs and Cú before landing on Marian. She sees the instant reality rushes back in and reminds him of who she was, what he was doing here, and what happened to him. " _Oh_." He groans a little, like someone waking from a nap. "I rather thought I would wake up dead. Or not wake up at all, as the case may be," he says in a strong Antivan accent. Marian wonders at the likelihood of an Antivan just _happening_ to hear of the bounty on their heads. It seems beyond the range of chance. "But I see you haven't killed me yet," he goes on, in a cheerful voice that seems utterly inappropriate to his current status in life. Does he not see Alistair's sword, or her dog's ferocious teeth?

"Is something about your situation amusing?" Marian asks coolly.

The elf laughs, and then winces, his free hand covering the wound on his stomach. "It's my way, or so I am told," he says with a smirk. It's a very convincing one, too, and Marian would be quite fooled if she couldn't see the pain tightening his eyes. It's a front. Why is he bothering with the act? "But surely that is not why you are currently sparing my life?"

"These were your men," Marian says, glancing at the dead bodies on the ground nearest her. Wynne and Leliana have finished with them and are checking the dead on the berm.

"Yes," he says, following her glance and then shrugging dismissively. It's clear that his henchmen mean nothing to him. "Hirelings, and not very skilled ones at that. I think I was shortchanged, to be quite frank with you."

"You know we're Grey Wardens," Marian says, glancing involuntarily at Alistair before she forces her eyes back to the elf at their feet. "Are you after the bounty?" she asks. 

"Ah!" he exclaims, pleased. "I'm to be interrogated, then? Let me save you some time. My name is Zevran Arainai, Zev to my friends. I am a member of the Antivan Crows, brought here for the sole purpose of slaying any surviving Grey Wardens." He surveys Marian and Alistair, Cú sat between them, and laughs. "Which I have failed at, sadly."

The Crows? Marian's read about them once or twice, mostly in books from the other side of the Waking Sea. The Antivan Crows are spoken of like a public service in some places and a nuisance in others. Sometimes they're not spoken of at all, but slip through history like ghosts with sharp knives. It had been difficult to get a proper read on what they were really like. 

Who would hire someone like that? 

She puts the question to the elf, to Zevran, and he shrugs his shoulder a little. "A rather taciturn fellow in the capital," he says. "Loghain, I think his name was? Yes, that's it."

"Loghain?" Marian repeats, dumbstruck. She looks at Alistair again, and he's looking back, just as incredulous and confused as she is. The bounty on their heads is one thing, whatever she might think of its motivation, but hiring an assassin is something entirely different, sly and detached and something she would never, ever have expected from the Hero of River Dane. 

The assassin had also said that Loghain was in Denerim, or had been when he'd hired Zevran. It lies across the entirety of Ferelden from here, and while she does feel safer with nearly the whole country between them, it also means that Loghain has all the resources of the capital and Cailan's forces at his command. They've been extremely lax about their safety, wearing their uniforms openly on the road, trusting people on not much more than their word, and they have to do better.

She'll talk to Alistair about it later.

"How did you know where to find us?" Marian asks the assassin. It's been bothering her since the trap sprung.

"You may not know it, but you're rather famous already," Zevran says, a smirk on his face. She's quickly coming to realize that he's one of those people for whom everything that comes out of their mouth is some flavor of suggestive. Maybe it's the accent? In any case, it sets her teeth on edge. "I found someone who'd seen you in Lothering and knew which way you'd gone. He managed to get out before the darkspawn came. Lucky, that man. Then it was just a matter of – "

Wait. _What?_

"What did you just say?" Marian demands, interrupting him, crouching so she can see his face the better. "Did you say there are darkspawn in Lothering?"

The ever-present amusement fades a little, and he looks from her to Alistair and back. "I'm not surprised you haven't heard," he says carefully, weighing something as he goes. "It happened quite recently. The darkspawn horde has overrun Lothering."

"No," Marian breathes. Mother – Bethany – _Please, no. Maker, you cannot be so cruel – not_ now _, when I have finally found them._ She'd told them and told them again that the darkspawn were at their door, and begged them to leave.

She can only hope that they did.

"Marian?" 

It's Alistair, of course, and he doesn't know what's wrong with her. She can't fall apart _again_ , not now. 

She squeezes her eyes tightly shut, passes a hand over her face, imagining the emotion draining down and away as she does, and calms herself with a true effort of will. She stands. "If Lothering is overrun, the horde can spill straight out into the Bannorn," she says like that's what she's truly concerned about, glancing over at Alistair as she does. 

Zevran watches her closely, carefully, with interest, and she knows that she's given away more than she wanted to. He saw her face where Alistair did not. He must know she's lying. He might think to use that somehow.

"There's nothing there but farmland and villages," Alistair says, horror-struck. "Loghain took the army with him to Denerim. They're defenseless."

Oh, Maker... She hadn't truly thought about it before when it fell out of her mouth, but now? The Bannorn is a flat bowl, the soft heart of Ferelden, where its crops are grown and its cattle graze. There's nothing to stop the darkspawn from filling it up. Then they'd have the run of the country, able to back its citizens against the Frostbacks to the west and the ocean to the east. Nowhere would be safe.

"We have to move faster," Marian says firmly, and Alistair nods, catching her mood. She turns back to the assassin, who is watching them with lively interest. She tries to remember what else she'd wanted to ask him, but the shock has interrupted her train of thought.

Well, there is _one_ thing that comes to mind...

"Are the Crows going to send someone else, now that you have failed?" 

He laughs, though the effort clearly hurts and his hand is so tight against his wound that his fingers are white. She is reluctantly impressed by the fact that he's functional. She'd be screaming by now. "Oh, yes," he says agreeably. "Not for some time, I should imagine, and they will have to find someone else to bid on the contract." He shrugs, as though the idea makes no difference to him, and she supposes it doesn't. He's tried and failed, and whatever they decide to do with him doesn't seem to weigh on his mind at all.

That thought hits her like a battering ram. _Oh, Maker, what are we going to_ do _with him?_ She'd rather leave him to his own devices, but that's a death sentence with a stomach wound. They can heal him and then let him go, which is just asking for him to dog them all over Thedas, or they can kill him.

She is so tired of death.

"Have I missed anything?" she asks Alistair, hoping against hope that he'll just hand her a way out of this dilemma on a silver platter. He thinks about it for a moment, to give him credit, but he shakes his head. _Damn_.

Zevran tilts his head. "Then unless you're quite stuck on cutting my throat or something equally gruesome, perhaps you'd care to hear a proposal?"

Leliana and Wynne now stand behind Zevran, finished with their grisly work, and Marian glances at them, makes sure that they're ready for anything before she nods at Zevran to continue.

"Well, here's the thing," he begins, unexpectedly sober. "I failed to kill you, so my life is forfeit. That's how it works. If you don't kill me, the Crows will." Leliana nods behind him, and Marian is grateful that at least one of them knows something about what he's talking about – _but how does she know?_ a little part of her asks insistently. "Thing is, I like living. And you obviously are the sort to give the Crows pause. So let me serve _you_ instead."

She'd expected some sort of lengthy request for his life, or possibly an offer to return to Denerim and take care of their Loghain problem for them. But _this_? Zevran sounds more straightforward than he has since he woke up, but he's still affecting a sort of light-heartedness she finds rather alien at the moment, and she hasn't forgotten what a good front he's capable of putting on when it suits him. Straightforward doesn't mean honest. 

"Serve us in what way?" Marian asks warily. She's a _fool_ for encouraging this.

"Why, I am skilled at _many_ things," Zevran says, that suggestive note back in his voice. She's sure she's meant to think about how very many things he could be skilled at, and what they might be. How does this routine work for him? "From fighting to stealth, picking locks..." He trails off as she raises her eyebrow doubtfully, and then hurries back into speech, speaking quickly. "I could also warn you should the Antivan Crows attempt something more _sophisticated_ now that my attempts have failed. I could also stand around and look pretty, if you prefer." He _waggles his eyebrows_ at her, and only then, when he's so over-the-top as to be a caricature of a stereotype, does Marian realize he's teasing her. She rolls her eyes. "Fend off unwanted suitors? Warm your bed?" He lays the seduction on thick there, innuendo cloaked in a pretense of delicacy, and Marian raises her eyebrows at him in cool disbelief.

"No," Marian says flatly. She hears Alistair shift beside her; the sounds of his armor have become as familiar to her as her own, as breathing.

Zevran laughs. "I like a woman who knows exactly what she wants. I really do," he says with a smirk. If her reactions are dissuading him, he shows no sign of it. He'd just tried to kill her! He's bleeding to death! 

_Men._

"And what's stopping you from finishing the job later?" Marian asks, deliberately arch, raising her eyebrows.

"Besides yourself and your very large friend over there?" Zevran asks, eyeing Alistair, who dwarfs them all. "To be completely honest, I was never given much of a choice regarding joining the Crows. They bought me on the slave market when I was a child." He shrugs, like that matters very little to him. "I think I've paid my worth back to them, plus tenfold. The only way out, however, is to sign up with someone they can't touch." He makes a soft noise, surprised, as if something's struck him that he's never thought about before. "Even if I did kill you now, they might kill me just on principle for failing the first time." Zevran shrugs, watching her closely. "Honestly, I'd rather take my chances with you."

 _Oh, I'll just bet you would._ His sob story is – actually, she believes it, and she's not sure why. Perhaps it's the careless way he reels it off, like he doesn't give a toss about it. The whole thing is a very likely story, and that's why she distrusts it. She has gotten the impression that for Zevran Arainai, the easy answer is just that: far, far too easy. 

But she'd wanted a way out of this impasse. Here's one, being handed to her on a silver platter.

She lifts her eyes to glance at Wynne, who looks back with distant sympathy, but offers no help. Leliana nods, giving Marian the tiniest of smiles, friendly and supportive – but she keeps an arrow drawn on Zevran, Marian notices. Lastly, she looks at Alistair, and finds him staring at her incredulously. " _What_?"

Marian checks once more to make sure that Leliana is covering Zevran and then pulls Alistair away by the elbow. 

"You're not actually thinking about this, are you?" he demands as soon as they're out of earshot. "Taking the _assassin_ with us? Does that really seem like a good idea?" He searches her face like he's desperately hoping that she'll announce that the joke's on him this time. In a way, it is – the joke's on all of them, that is, because this is going to banjax their tent allocations in camp.

"I don't _want_ to! Do you really think I trust that lecher? Give me another option, something that means I don't have to choose to kill someone else today," Marian says helplessly.

"We'll be looking over our shoulders every _minute_ ," Alistair says roughly. He looks almost angry. She's no idea what's going on in his head. Not all of her decisions have been popular with him, but he's never gotten upset at her about anything until now. "Suppose he has magebane?" Marian shivers instinctively, and Alistair swears under his breath. "Sorry," he mutters. "But I really don't think this is a good idea."

"I know," Marian says, sighing. "I don't disagree. But Alistair..." She looks up at him, looks him full in the face, and what she'd meant to say is wiped from her mind. It's not anger, she realizes, it's _concern_. He's worried about her safety. She steps a little closer. He's so much taller than she that she has to tip her head back a little to look him full in the face.

Just his presence makes her feel safe.

"We'll figure something out," Marian says quietly, wishing she could take his hand or touch his face, two things that are entirely too intimate for them. Those things are reserved for lovers. She has no way to reassure him but words. Luckily, words are her favorite things. 

"I don't like him," she admits. "I don't trust him, and I can't see that changing." Alistair's face lightens at her words, and she smiles wanly at him, a pale, anemic thing that he returns in kind. "But we need all the help we can get," she says, trying to remind him of the seriousness of their situation. 

"Maker, you're not wrong," Alistair admits with a grimace. "We could use the help, I suppose, but..." He sighs. "Still, if there was a sign we were desperate, I think it just knocked on the door and said hello."

She's so happy to see the return of his low-key sarcasm that she doesn't reply, just smiles at him, huge and real and heart-felt. Then she turns to go back to Zevran and the others, missing the poleaxed expression on his face.

"All right," Marian says to Zevran, eyeing him coolly. "We'll give it a try." She raises her eyebrows, expectant. "I expect you to be on your best behavior."

"I can do that," Zevran says, smirking. Marian rolls her eyes, _again_. What has she let herself in for?

Between them, Wynne and Marian have enough healing spells and potions to repair Zevran's shredded intestines and purify his abdomen, but he'll be weak for quite a while, and he'll have a scar there for the rest of his life. 

It's early in the afternoon, but Wynne expresses her reservations about Zevran moving too much in the strongest possible terms, so Marian sends Alistair and Leliana ahead to find a campsite while she and Wynne help Zevran to follow them. When Bodahn catches up with them early the next morning, they load Zevran into the back of his cart, and quickmarch the rest of the way to Redcliffe.


	25. The Ritual

When they get to Castle Redcliffe, Marian thinks long and hard about having Zevran condemned to the dungeons while they're there, but she sighs and directs a servant to take him to one of the guest rooms instead. 

She sends Sten after him. She might be soft-hearted, but she's not _stupid_. 

Then she joins Irving and the other mages in the hall, where they're speaking with Teagan and Lady Isolde.

"All has been quiet since you left," Teagan says, nodding to her as she meets them. "Connor has locked himself in the family rooms and will not come out." He sounds worried and impatient, but above all else he sounds tired. What must it have felt like, to live in the shadow of an abomination in the body of his own nephew? To fear every moment that the abomination might come out and visit some new horror on Redcliffe's people? Marian would be very much surprised if Teagan had gotten more than a few hours of intermittent sleep while they were gone.

"We should hurry," Marian says to them, but mostly to Irving, who holds the reins on this particular experiment. She has no idea how to perform the ritual that sends one's mind into the Fade. 

Irving nods, gesturing to the other mages. "We have already begun the preparations," he says in his gravelly, aged voice. "We can start anytime."

"Good," Marian says with a firm nod. "Let's begin now, then."

"We haven't sufficient lyrium at present to send more than one mage into the Fade," Irving says. "I assume it will be you going into the Fade, or did you have someone else in mind?"

It's only then that it truly hits her: she has to go back into the Fade, where the demons live, where she was so recently tempted by some _thing_ wearing the face of her dead father. They don't even know what kind of demon holds Connor in its thrall – it could be anything, even a desire demon, and then where would she be? She is so scared that next time, next time will burn up the last of her will, and she won't be able to refuse or resist. Oh, she doesn't want to _do_ this – 

But who else can she send? There is Morrigan, who Marian is still not sure she fully trusts, or Irving, who is far too old for this sort of thing, or Wynne, who'd had just as trying an experience in the Fade as Marian had – and she is theoretically younger and more resilient. 

She needs to get the fuck over this. She cannot avoid the Fade for the rest of her life, and she's the best person for this job. Fine. 

If only reason were enough to banish fear.

"I'll go," Marian says.

After that, things happen very quickly indeed: Irving and the other mages set up the same font she'd used in her Harrowing in a little storage room on the main floor while Marian and the others hang back and watch. Even now, Marian finds herself fascinated by the rituals they're using, catches herself trying to memorize the incantations, the runes, the spell geometry. Morrigan is standing in the doorway, watching with her arms crossed over her chest, and every so often she makes a soft, displeased sound like an angry cat.

When they're finished, Irving beckons Marian over, and at once she puts her hand into the font. The Fade drags her down, and perhaps it's her imagination, but this time it feels hungry...

\---

When she opens her eyes again, she's back in the Fade. She's faced with one path this time, and she takes it, for a lack of any other options. She's hardly two steps in before a ghost that resembles Connor walks straight past her, for all the world like she's not there at all. She stops dead and watches him walk around a bend in the path and out of her sight. When she turns back around, _another_ ghost, identical to the first, walks past her and around the bend in the road, just like the first.

What _is_ this place?

She proceeds cautiously, peering around curves in the road, while ghostly forms shaped like Connor and Arl Eamon drift around her, calling out for each other, complaining and angry and scared. None of them react to her. She's not even sure that they're real. 

Eventually she stumbles on an Eamon that looks more solid than the rest, who seems to see her as well. She can't be sure he's not a demon in disguise, but all he asks is that she help Connor, which she'd intended to do anyway. Still she's wary, and leaves him without learning anything new. He prays as she walks away, and silently she prays with him: _Blessed art thou who seeks His forgiveness._

She finds Connor later, in a different place; but then as she speaks to him, she realizes that it's not Connor, it is his demon, trying to trick her, to delay her, to do anything to keep her from saving him. 

And then Connor drops the disguise and turns into a desire demon in a heart-stopping flash of images. Marian puts her down, and it's _easy_ , startlingly, worryingly so. 

She moves on, and another Connor accuses her of his father's murder, begs her and orders her to leave. It changes into the demon, too, and Marian fights it and defeats it in just the same way as the first.

Where is the temptation? Where is the sweet, sickening seduction she'd expected? 

There is yet another Connor down the path, and this one is so defensive of the demon's actions, and in such a flagrantly transparent manner, that Marian lights up her ice spell immediately. This battle goes much the same as the others. When it's done, Marian stares at the space where the demon had been, where it just disappeared, and wonders. 

The path ends in a large, round clearing. The desire demon is waiting there, her hands on her hips, watching Marian with a cool, calculating look that promises things Marian won't enjoy. The demon tries to speak to her, but she's most emphatically not listening. A well-placed winter spell does half of her work for her, and after that it's easy, no matter how much wool the demon tries to pull over her eyes with her clones. 

When the demon dies, she can feel it reverberate out through the Fade, erasing this wasted dream as it goes. Everything here begins to dissipate, subsuming back into the dank mist that stretches as far as the eye can see, and hastily she wills herself to wake up.

When she wakes in the littlest guestroom she'd been assigned to before, Irving and Wynne check her over straightaway and even as Wynne is scolding her for her current state of exhaustion, Isolde and Teagan move straight from effusive thanks to asking her to perform yet another impossible task.

"You want me to _what_?" Marian says in disbelief. 

Isolde frowns. Clearly Marian has deviated from the script. "The Urn of Sacred Ashes," she repeats, like she thinks Marian just didn't hear her clearly. "It will save Eamon. It is the only thing that can now."

"The Urn is a legend," Marian says flatly, pulling her hand out of Wynne's and giving her a quick, grateful smile that she lets slip off her face when she gets up from the bed and turns back to Isolde and Teagan. "You want me to ignore the Blight, my _sworn duty_ , to look for a myth? Lothering is overrun," she says, and this time, for once, she's expecting the desperate unhappiness that tries to climb up her throat and strangle her. She swallows past it. "Lothering is overrun," Marian says, softly, but with no less insistence. "Alistair and I have a responsibility we cannot neglect."

"Eamon is the only one who can pull Ferelden together in this time of crisis," Teagan says, reminding her of why they'd started here in the first place. "If you wish to fight the darkspawn with Ferelden armies, you will need him."

Marian hates it when she comes up against an unassailable truth. She takes one steadying breath through her nose, and then another, and when she feels less like she might start screaming hysterically at all the people who expect her to do the impossible and save them when she's only an eighteen-year-old girl three weeks removed from her Harrowing, she asks, "What would you have me do?"

"My husband funded the research of a scholar in Denerim – a Brother Genitivi," Isolde says, pressing her folded hands against her stomach. 

"Brother Genitivi?" Marian says, suddenly excited. "Brother _Ferdinand_ Genitivi?"

Isolde nods, her forehead creased in puzzlement. "Do you know him?"

Marian laughs. "I know _of_ him, of course," she says. "Doesn't everyone?" Genitivi's written nearly a quarter of the Circle library, damn near half if you're only counting the academically rigorous portion. Suddenly her errand doesn't seem so bad. 

"He has been studying the inscriptions on Andraste's Birth Rock," Isolde says, glancing at Teagan. "When Eamon fell ill, I sent the knights to speak to Genitivi. I hoped that he had finally discovered the location of the Urn of Sacred Ashes itself. They were unable to locate Genitivi. In desperation, I sent more knights in search of the brother or some clue of the Urn's location."

Marian sighs. "I have to insist that we stay here for at least two nights before we leave again," she says, surrendering implicitly. "And many of my companions need outfitting."

Teagan agrees easily, gratefully, and Marian arranges to leave the First Enchanter here to watch over Eamon while she's gone. She's more surprised than she ought to be to find that Irving and Eamon know each other well. Irving will take good care of his friend.

Then everyone files out of what she's pretty sure is her room again, and she's left alone with her thoughts.

She's been suckered into a fool's errand, and not all of her companions are going to like that. Sten doesn't seem like the type to chase after rainbows, and Morrigan has already loudly proclaimed her opinion of Andraste and the Maker. Even more worrying is the viper in the grass, the assassin she'd taken in on not much more than his word and the sight of his pale fingers clenched against a wound in pain. She'd also allowed herself to grow fond of Leliana, and Marian's quite certain she's hiding something, though she cannot figure out what. 

She takes her armor off, her movements slow and leaden with exhaustion, all the while thinking hard about leaving Zevran here, with Teagan and his guards. It's a tempting thought. But he swore to her and Alistair, not to Teagan. If she leaves him behind, he might think himself free to hunt them again. If he plans to break his oath, she would rather have him under her hand.

Now that she's had time to think about it, she's less worried about whether he'll go back on his word. She is never truly defenseless, except when she's sleeping or in the case of magebane, and Alistair is pretty handy with his sword.

It might be wise to make sure she and Alistair are never asleep at the same time, though. 

By this point she's down to her smalls, staring blankly at her hands holding her leather pants. She shakes her head and redresses in her soft shirt and trousers. She'll have to find Alistair and steal some of the saddle soap and oil she needs for her armor, but... Marian picks up her Circle robes, the ones she'd been wearing when she left, and wrinkles her nose. They haven't even met a bar of soap since, and they're _nasty_. She couldn't wear them right now even if she wanted to, which she most emphatically does not. Unfortunately, she also knows she can't just hand them off to the castle washerwomen and let them handle it. The magic impregnated into the fabric resists traditional methods of cleaning. She'll have to ask Wynne what to do with them. She drops them back into her packs with a sigh.

She goes out to find her companions and tell them the good news.

\---

Everyone seems to have something to say to her today. 

Wynne wants to talk about Jowan and her precipitous departure from the Circle; Marian listens for as long as she can bear before she excuses herself and makes her escape. Sten flat-out asks her if she's a woman, which makes no sense to her until he goes on to explain the role in which women serve under the Qun. She's too shocked to be properly angry while she tries to explain the flaws in his logic, but he's doubtful, uninterested, and finally leaves her grinding her teeth while she stalks down the hallway. She doesn't bother informing Zevran, since she thinks that he wouldn't care if she took them straight to Tevinter, and she has no interest in indulging him in his suggestive banter right now. Alistair has gone down to the village with Teagan to oversee the long-delayed funeral pyres. Leliana is blessedly uncomplicated, though she looks like she has something on her mind; she shakes her head when Marian asks her if something is wrong, so Marian leaves her to it. She has to ask several guards before she finds one who saw where Morrigan went. Apparently she's taken to haunting the ramparts. After a brief detour to her room, Marian drops off Flemeth's grimoire with a smile and flees back inside, where it's warm.

On the way back, Marian filches _Tales of the Destruction of Thedas_ and several other books from Eamon's study and reads in her room for most of the afternoon, curled up on the bed with Cú draped over her feet. She's warm and cozy and once in a while, she even manages to forget. 

It's not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

\---

A maid brings her a borrowed dress for dinner, and afterward Marian returns to her room, which is now hers alone. Someone has lit a cheerful fire in her absence, and she changes into an old shift and curls up in front of it with her dog and a book. 

After a few hours of this, it becomes apparent that she hadn't eaten enough at dinner. Her stomach is growling so loud that it wakes Cú and startled, he growls back. He gives her huge, pleading eyes when he realizes what he's done, and that's when she starts to laugh.

"If only that worked," she says to him, standing and dropping the book on her bed. "I'll bring you something from the larder, shall I?"

Cú barks once in happy agreement and she grins at him before slipping out through her door, silent in bare feet. The other doors in the guest wing are closed, and she imagines that most of the castle has gone to sleep by now. She remembers where the kitchens are, so it's a simple matter to find them again, and then the larder is off to one side, easily located in the dim light of the banked fire. 

Marian casts her little wisp light to help her see. Against the far wall there's a huge, gorgeous meat pie that she has to have, so she cuts a wedge of it, then spots a bit of ham for Cú. She piles two apples and some dry, crumbly cheese on top of all that, and thinks seriously about a plate of delicate honey cakes before giving herself a mental shake. She cannot possibly be _this_ hungry, not after the dinner they'd been given. She turns to put the apples back and nearly drops everything when she sees Alistair leaning in the doorway, grinning at her. He's wearing the same shirt and trousers he'd been wearing in the library that day. His shirtsleeves are rolled up to expose his forearms, and Marian's mouth waters in a way that has nothing to do with food.

"Hungry?" he asks, looking down at the haul piled in her arms with raised eyebrows.

She swallows. "Yes," she admits, looking down at her snacks so she'll stop looking at his arms. That's when she remembers what she's wearing, or more precisely, what she's _not_ wearing, which is anything that could be considered proper clothing. She can feel her face turning red. She tries to surreptitiously shift the food in her arms to provide more cover, but... her shift is cut rather low, and there's a lot to cover. It's not working. Marian sneaks a look at Alistair's face, and while he's gone red, too, he isn't looking away like she expected, but he _is_ keeping his eyes very intently on her face and nowhere else.

"Me, too," he says, low, like it's a confession. It takes her a minute to remember what they'd been talking about. 

"There's part of a pie back there," Marian offers, jerking her head toward the other wall. "It smells amazing."

Alistair blinks at her for a second before he glances over her shoulder at the pie and grins. "Wait for me, will you?" he asks her, and then slides by her to get to the pie. Marian shrinks into herself to avoid touching him, but she still catches his scent as he goes by, and even though he smells like cold metal and sweaty man she can't stop herself from breathing him in. 

_Stop it_ , she scolds herself. Marian takes two quick steps to the door and puts her back to the wall next to it, watching Alistair take a plate for his pie, and two slices of roasted duck, and some crusty bread she'd missed. She frowns. She has no hands for bread now, and that's a sadness. Alistair finishes off his plate with three or four of the honey cakes she'd salivated over before holding it out to her expectantly. She stares at him, confused. "Do you really want to carry all that?" he asks, frowning. "I wanted to talk to you, anyway. We can go eat in Arl Eamon's study, or there's another room down the hall with a table, if you'd prefer."

"A table, if you please," Marian says, dropping her spoils onto his plate, including the apples. She lets her arms drop, feeling peculiarly uncovered, and now Alistair's eyes do drift downward toward her breasts before he jerks his gaze back up to her face. He flushes again and pushes through the door, leaving her to follow. The tips of his ears are red, too, and the back of his neck.

Marian swallows. She can feel her nipples tightening. What possessed her to come downstairs in little more than her smalls? She follows him, glancing around for anything she can use to cover up, but no one has thoughtfully left a dress lying around that she can wear. Only direct divine intervention is going to help her now. Maybe she should go up to her room first? Or they could eat in her room, where she still has one of the waterskins with her things? 

Of course, her bed is there, too, Marian reminds herself. No. Instead, she does her best to pull the neckline of her shift up toward her throat and achieves all of an inch of extra coverage before Alistair turns into a small room off of the hallway. It's obviously the family's private dining room, with a small, round table and a sideboard wedged up against the wall. 

"Here we are," Alistair says, dropping the plate on the table. He glances at her again, smiles faintly, and then he pulls out the chair in front of him and gestures for her to sit in it. His ears are red again, and his cheekbones are burning. This is as awkward for him as it is for her.

This is exactly what she didn't want her _feelings_ to cause. She has to fix it. 

She moves closer, her feet soundless on the stone floor, touches his hand to draw his attention, and smiles at him. He smiles back, relieved, and then she sits down and he pushes the chair in to meet her. He hovers behind her for a moment before he moves away, and Marian takes the opportunity to close her eyes and take one deep breath for steadiness before he's back with a decanter and two delicate goblets from the sideboard.

"What's that?" she asks, deliberately bright and cheerful, as he pulls out the chair next to her and sits.

"No idea," Alistair says with a shrug. He pours her a glass of something thin and sweet-smelling, shining gold in the candlelight. 

Marian lifts her little wisp light and sticks it in midair where it hangs like a chandelier, then takes the glass from his hand and raises it to him. "To snack raids," she says, her mouth curving. 

He laughs and toasts her in return. "To Eamon's best," he says, and they both drink. It's a lovely and crisp honey mead, bright with spices and the bite of cider apples. She takes another sip and then snags her wedge of pie off their shared plate.

"I don't know why I'm so hungry," Marian complains between bites of pie and pastry crust. "I feel like I could eat all of this myself."

"Have you felt like that often lately?" Alistair asks, stealing one of her apples. If they're sharing, then she'll have some of that bread, thank you... "That you could eat a horse, I mean."

"More and more," Marian admits. She eyes him. "Is this something Warden-related?"

Alistair nods. "Sounds like the Joining is taking," he says. "It takes longer for different people, but two weeks sounds about right. I think that's how long it took to kick in for me."

"So when do I get magical darkspawn-sensing powers?" Marian licks crumbs of pastry off her fingers. 

Alistair clears his throat and she looks at him curiously, but he's already nose-deep in his goblet. When he resurfaces, he puts his goblet back down. "Probably anytime now," he says.

Marian turns in her chair to sit sideways, focused on Alistair now instead of the food. She snags a piece of cheese and savors it, taking slow, tiny bites as she brings her knees up to sit curled into the chair. "What does it feel like?" she asks, hoping that he's feeling up to talking. 

"The darkspawn?" Alistair asks, and she nods. He picks a slab of duck and rips a bit off, chewing slowly as he thinks. "Honestly, it's a bit like being sick," he says with a grimace. "Nausea, but inside your mind. Lovely, isn't it?" She makes a face. He laughs. 

"So I've been wondering... what else can I expect?" Marian asks him. He passes her a honey cake and immediately she bites into it. Redcliffe's cook knows what she's about; everything is _delicious_. "Does Redcliffe have an apiary?" she asks curiously.

"Holme keeps some bees up north a bit, outside of the village," Alistair says, distracted by his own cake. "Mmm... I have to admit, I did miss these when I left for the Chantry." He finishes it, licking his fingers. "As for what's coming... Nightmares, for one thing. Duncan said it was part of how we sense the darkspawn. We tap into their..." He trails off, looking for the words. "Well, I don't know what you'd call it. Their 'group mind'. And when we sleep, it's even worse. You learn to block it out after a while, but at first it's hard." He falls silent, playing with a knob of cheese that's slowly crumbling to bits between his fingers. What sort of nightmares has he been having, to put that look on his face? Then he looks up at her. "It's supposed to be worse for those who Join during a Blight. How is it for you?"

Marian curves her mouth in a practiced smile. "Believe me, I've had worse," she says, forcing her voice light and amused. She doesn't want to tell him about her strange dreams, about the way she'd _been_ the archdemon. She doesn't want him to worry.

He eyes her, then shrugs, ripping off another bit of duck and offering it to her. She takes it, watching his hands, his fingers glistening with rich juices. For a moment, she imagines seizing his hand, the surprised way he'd look at her, turning swiftly into shock as she pulls his fingers to her mouth and starts to lick the juice off of his fingers with delicate little laps of her tongue. Would he let her? Would he blush? Would he watch her with huge eyes? Would he -

She eats the duck. It, too, is delicious.

"Some people never have much trouble, but that's rare," Alistair says doubtfully. He rips a chunk of bread away and squashes it onto his cheese crumbs, cleaning them off the table before stuffing the whole thing in his mouth. "Others have trouble sleeping their entire life. They're just more sensitive, I suppose. Everyone ends up the same, though. Once you reach a certain age, the real nightmares start. That's how a Grey Warden knows his time has come."

"What are you talking about?" Marian asks, frowning.

Alistair glances at her, confused, but when he realizes she's serious, he winces. "That's right, we never had time to tell you that part, did we?" His hand slips into his pocket, and Marian just knows he's got his worry stone in there from the way he's fiddling his fingers. He's a born fidgeter. It also lets her know that she's probably not going to like this. He says, so bluff and hearty she wants to smack him, "Well, in addition to all the other wonderful things about being a Grey Warden, you don't need to worry about dying from old age!" He drops the cheerful sarcasm when she gives him her best unimpressed face. "You've got thirty years to live. Give or take."

 _What_? All the blood rushes out of her head, leaving her feeling terribly unsteady even though she's sitting down.

"The taint... it's a death sentence," he says, so serious, looking down at his hands. "Ultimately your body won't be able to take it. When the time comes, most Grey Wardens go to Orzammar and die in battle rather than... waiting. It's tradition." He looks at her now, to gauge her reaction, but he can't hold her eyes, glancing away again.

She doesn't know what to say. She can barely think for all the white noise rushing through her head. "Maker," she breathes. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"You think if we asked for volunteers, that Grey Wardens would exist?" Alistair asks, looking at her again with his eyebrows raised. "Maybe a few. You wouldn't be here. Neither would I, probably. And the Blight needs to be stopped."

He's not wrong, she supposes, but that doesn't make what they've done palatable... But it's done now, and she's not going to blame Alistair for what was most likely Duncan's decision. Or perhaps this is standard Grey Warden practice. Either way, as the most junior Warden, there wasn't anything he could have done, and he hadn't owed them anything more than basic courtesy.

In any case, her preoccupation with the idea is putting the cart before the horse – first she has to make it through the rest of the Blight, a task which is looking more and more difficult every day.

"You know," Alistair says in a low voice, staring up at her light. He startles her out of the hazy thoughts she'd been preoccupied with, but if he notices her twitch, he makes no mention of it. "Duncan... he started having the nightmares again. He told me that – in private. He said it wouldn't be long before he'd go to Orzammar himself." Alistair glances at her. His grief echoes within her, so close to what she's feeling that impulsively Marian reaches out and takes his hand, just to hold. They touch so rarely that his skin still feels strange and unfamiliar against hers, but she brushes that away and hangs on, squeezing gently. Alistair needs a friend, and she could do with one herself. The look he turns on her is strange, one she can't decipher, and she starts to let go, but he shakes his head and clings to her hand.

Alistair laughs, a bitter thing born of his sadness, his hand tightening around hers. "I guess he got what he wanted. I just wish it had been something worthy of him."

"We can do one thing for him," Marian says, staring at Alistair and willing him to meet her eyes again, waiting patiently until he does. "We can finish this. For Duncan. And we can make him proud."

His eyes warm and one corner of his mouth tugs upward in a half-smile. "Somehow you always know what to say," he says. "That's a strange sort of magic."

Marian snorts. "If only that were true," she says. Before he can ask her what she means, she asks, "Anything else I should know?"

"Hmm," Alistair says. Marian loosens her grip in a subtle signal that he could let go if he wanted to, but he holds on like he hasn't noticed. Maybe he didn't? Marian dithers, incapable of making up her mind whether he wants to sit there _holding hands_ or if his callouses mean he can't feel what she did. Maybe it was just too subtle. Maybe she should do something instead of working herself into a lather over _nothing_.

It doesn't feel like nothing, though. She loves his hands, with long, square fingers and broad palms that fit around hers delightfully, and his skin is so warm. Maker, she never thought she could be aroused just by holding someone's hand. This is becoming a problem.

"Well, there is one more thing," Alistair says, glancing at her warily. "With the taint in our blood, it's hard for a Grey Warden to have a child. Every Grey Warden I knew who had children had them before they took the Joining. I think there have been a few who bore children afterward, but... they're rare at best."

She sits there for a long time, trying to decide how she feels about this. She's never thought about having children. Most of the time she still feels like a child herself. She doesn't even know if she _wants_ children.

That's the point, though. She hadn't decided. She'd never had the chance to make up her own mind on the idea, and now the decision's been taken from her.

Alistair's watching her uncertainly, like he thinks she might explode. She digs up a smile for him, but she's afraid it's a poor effort. "Oh, well," she says. "I wasn't really planning on it anytime soon, in any case."

He doesn't look as if he believes her, but she's not sure she believes herself, so it's all right. She thinks he understands.

Marian doesn't want to think about this anymore. She rests her chin on her knees and asks him, "Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Oh, no," Alistair says. He lets go of her hand then to reach for cheese, and if she's honest with herself, she's feeling a lot of disappointment over that. She tucks her hands between her thighs and her calves, accidentally brushing the sensitive skin of her inner thighs on the way. She shivers.

"Are you cold?" Alistair asks, and she's quick to shake her head. She doesn't want him to fuss. "All right," he says dubiously, looking at her shift. "If you're sure... I want to talk about what happened, about Connor."

"All right," Marian says, confused. "What's the matter?"

"I just wanted to thank you," Alistair says, so seriously that she's caught off guard. "You went out of your way to save the arl's family and you did it, even though it would have been easier not to."

"It wasn't exactly out of our way," Marian points out. "We had to go to the Circle eventually anyway."

"You can't tell me you wanted to, though, at least not in a way I'd believe," Alistair says with narrowed eyes, daring her to try. She acknowledges the point with a wry smile. " _And_ you're the one who thought of appealing to the Circle to save him in the first place." He sighs. "There's been so much death and destruction, it... well, it makes me feel good that at least we were able to save something, no matter how small. I owed the arl that much."

"I'm so tired of killing people," Marian confesses in a tiny voice. She closes her eyes. "I couldn't bear it if we'd killed Connor, even though I know we probably should have."

"You think he's still possessed?" Alistair asks, disturbed. She opens her eyes to find him looking at her with no little concern.

She lifts her head to look at him. "It was too _easy_ ," she says, upset. "What if I was wrong? Desire demons are smart enough to hide if they have to, to wait as long as they need to to get what they want. If she's still in there with him, we'll never know unless he explodes or something."

"Morrigan agreed with you, and while I might think she's a heartless bitch, she does seem to know what she's talking about," Alistair points out, and it's so like them that she has to laugh. "First Enchanter Irving seemed to agree with you, too, _and_ Wynne." He pokes her in the shin, and she scowls at him. "I think you've forgotten how much you've grown as a mage since you left the Tower. You're a lot different than you were, you know."

"Compliments will get you nowhere, ser," Marian says with narrowed eyes, but inside she's quietly pleased. She feels better, too, about Connor and about life in general.

"Are you sure?" Alistair says with a leer; she kicks him and they both laugh. It's surprisingly nice to just sit here and talk to him. She'd never imagined having anything in common with him when they met, though she might have been biased by his being a templar. A little bit. She knows that she has her reasons for keeping him at a bit of a distance, but here in this room, those reasons are far away and unimportant. It can't ever be, but... could it really hurt to pretend, just for a little while?

They talk long into the night and when Marian finally goes to bed, she has far more pleasant dreams than she'd expected.


	26. The Imposter

The next day, Marian avoids human company, only briefly checking in on Zevran's progress and then asking Wynne for help with her robes. She just needs some time alone. Last night, talking with Alistair, had been dangerously intimate. 

She tries and tries to remind herself that she can't get too close, that there's no room in her plans for emotional attachments to anyone, but she can't make herself regret it. Even her usually well-ordered mind is rebelling. 

Marian keeps herself busy with Eamon's library and sleeps restlessly, with dreams she can't remember when she wakes. She tells herself that's a good sign. Now if only she could believe it.

They set out the next morning, picking up Bodahn on the way through Redcliffe Village. He says it'll be about a week to Denerim on the West Road. 

The first day is entirely uneventful. Neither Marian nor Alistair are wearing their Warden armor; she's in freshly-laundered Circle robes, and he's wearing plate identical to what Ser Perth and the other knights of Redcliffe wore. Leliana has armor that actually fits her. Clearly Teagan had taken Marian's words to heart. She should probably thank him.

Sten is still wearing borrowed and blood-stained leathers, which are the only thing she's ever seen that's big enough for him to get on. She reminds herself to check for Qunari _anything_ in Denerim. At the very least, they should be able to find _something_ that isn't twelve sizes too small for him – or riddled with holes from the person who'd worn it before, holes Sten had probably put there.

Marian glances at the cart, where she'd directed that Zevran lie for at least the first day. Wynne says that he's more or less fully healed, and he'd do well to get some exercise and fresh air, but Marian isn't sure of him yet. She needs to talk to him in a proper conversation instead of an interrogation. She doesn't know what he could possibly say to ease her doubts, but she has to be willing to let him try, or she may as well have killed him when she had the chance.

When they stop for the night, first Leliana pulls Marian aside to run through her stances and then Bodahn asks for her attention.

"I'm ashamed I didn't think of this the first time we met," he says, digging through a pack he'd had in the depths of his cart. "I suppose I was in a bit of a state, wasn't I?" After several minutes of looking, Bodahn emerges triumphant, waving a brown paper parcel. "Here you are, Warden," he says, and hands it to her.

At his urging, she rips open the paper and pulls out a golden torc, several small earthenware bottles with tight corks, a pile of leather and two gigantic boots, which had been folded down tight to fit. 

"What's this?" Marian asks, completely confused. 

"Well, you see," Bodahn says, settling in and making himself comfortable. "When my boy and I passed through Lothering, I said to him, it might be that we have something we can offer these poor people, and so we set up shop. It was only for a little while, mind you, because the darkspawn were coming up behind us, but we managed to do a bit of trading anyhow. A rather twitchy fellow offered me that in return for a fair bit of coin. I convinced him to take the supplies he needed instead." He takes the pants and holds them by the waist, allowing them to unfold. "I think these might fit your Qunari friend a fair sight better than what he's wearing at the moment."

He's right. Marian thanks him most gratefully indeed, and makes her way over to Sten. 

"Bodahn had this in the back of his cart," she says, holding the parcel out him. "You mentioned that your armor looked something like this. I hope it fits."

Sten gives her the most disinterested, dubious glance she's ever seen from anyone, but he takes the package anyway. He rips open the twine with no more effort than she would give to ripping a piece of paper. 

Marian swallows. Sometimes she forgets how strong Sten is.

He pauses when he sees what's inside. " _Where_ did you get these?" he demands, in the first display of actual emotion she's seen from him. 

"Bodahn had them lying around, like I said," she says, mystified. "What's wrong? Do you recognize them?"

"They are mine," he answers, rapidly settling back into the stoic, slightly detached expression that he usually wears around the rest of them. "The priestess stripped these things from me when they caged me."

She shouldn't be surprised. This is what her life is now, after all: a series of unfortunate coincidences. 

"Then I'm glad I could return them to you," Marian says with a smile. "May I ask what's in those jars?" 

Sten regards her for a moment, then seems to make a decision and takes out one of the small jars, daubed with red paint on the side. "They are called _vitaar_ ," Sten says. He unfastens his cuirass, navigating the buckles with ease, even one-handed. He strips it off, and the thin undershirt that was all she could find for him, and quickly paints a complicated pattern on his own face and chest with the ease of long practice. He holds his naked arm out to her, and she gently touches his skin, finding it hard as a rock and curiously inflexible; but he obviously has no trouble moving, as he demonstrates when he bends to take the torc and fasten it around his neck. 

She has to admit that it suits him far better than the splintmail. 

"What is _vitaar_?" Marian asks, leaning over him to get a better look in the little pot. Then he explains that it's both blood magic and poison, mixed together with his blood, and that it would be death for her to touch it. She leans back again and keeps a wary distance.

Unfortunately, he doesn't know how to make it, nor does she think he'd tell her if he did. She leaves him alone, a little grumpy, and goes over to Zevran, who is lounging by the fire and trying to provoke Leliana into conversation. 

Marian takes her staff from its hooks on her back and sits cross-legged on the ground, watching them bicker. Then she starts to feel badly about leaving Leliana to her own devices and intervenes. 

"Zevran, may I have a word?" she asks.

"Of a certainty," Zevran says, sitting upright. "Duty calls, _cara_ ," he says to Leliana in farewell, and she rolls her eyes theatrically at Marian before she stands and walks away.

They're alone by the fire, but Marian can see what Zevran cannot; Alistair is by one of the tents behind him, pretending to grind a nick out of the edge of his sword. She can tell he's watching Zevran. She's safe as houses. 

Zevran watches her, an amused smile playing around his mouth, waiting for her to speak. "May I ask you about the Crows?" Marian asks.

"Of course," Zevran says with perfect courtesy, but that's _all_ that he says, forcing her to lead the conversation. It's a cheap trick that nonetheless succeeds in irritating her.

"Why did you want to leave the Crows, exactly?" she asks, her eyebrows arched.

"Ah, well now," Zevran says, leaning forward with a smile. "I imagine that's a very fair question. Being an assassin, after all, is a living, at least as far as such things go." He shrugs. "I was simply never given the opportunity to choose another way. So if that choice presents itself, why should I not seize upon it?"

Marian tilts her head, considering him carefully. "You said you were bought on the slave market when you were a child?"

"Oh, yes," Zevran says, his eyes far away. "I was but a boy of seven when I was purchased. For three sovereigns, I'm told." He comes back to the present with a shake of his head and shrugs at her. "Which is a good price, considering I was all ribs and bone and didn't know the pommel of a dagger from the pointy end. The Crows buy all their assassins that way. Buy them young, raise them to know nothing else but murder. And if you do poorly in your training, you die." 

It hits a little closer to home than she wants it to. Oh, not the slavery – she has no real basis of comparison there and she knows it. But the Circle was clearly working off of the same model as the Crows. 

Or is she being overly empathetic again? She hadn't let the fear twist her the way it had some of her fellow apprentices, who had gone wrong in all sorts of interesting ways, but oh, she understands the impulse. What was it like for Zevran? How did he react to it? These are the kind of things she wishes to know, and he clearly has no intention of being that vulnerable anytime soon. 

She ought to leave him to his devices and carry on, try again later. But she won't, because when he made her an oath, she accepted it, and whether he knows it or not, she owes him certain things in return. 

In any case, it's too late to dump him in a giant spider cave. She's half afraid he'd try to flirt his way out of it – and succeed.

He sounds bitter, though, more so than she expected. Can she work with that? A trusty assassin would be a formidable fighting companion. 

"You must have done quite well in your training, then," Marian says, careful to be as neutral as possible. 

"As I am sitting here, you mean? Yes, quite well," Zevran says, smiling. "We compete against our fellow assassins, and those who survive are rightfully proud of it. I know I am." Marian's suspicious, and Zevran raises his eyebrows at her. "You doubt me? In Antiva, being a Crow gets you respect. It gets you wealth. It gets you women... and men, or whatever it is you might fancy," he says with a knowing smirk. Then it fades. His expressions are all over the map – now lecherous, now bleak, now serious and thoughtful. "But that does mean doing what is expected of you, always. And it means being expendable. It's a cage, if a gilded cage. Pretty, but confining."

"Sometimes you just want to make your own decisions," Marian murmurs.

"I see you understand," Zevran says. He's looking at her, but she can't read his blank face this time. Is he acting now, or was he acting before when he'd had visible feelings? Or, more to the point, does he ever _stop_ acting? "I thought you might."

She hadn't considered the fact that trying to provoke him into an honest vulnerability might require exposing herself as well. Can she handle that? Is he worth it?

Why is he telling her this? If it's a story, what does he gain? Her sympathy, of course, but what else? Anyone with eyes can see that her sympathy is had as easily as falling off a log. 

Maker, her head hurts. She's so glad she'd never had to put her politicking lessons to use in the Circle. She would have exploded.

"I left the Crows to pursue my own future," he says after a while, staring into the fire. "Of course, that's presuming that there is one... But doing what? There's the question." He looks up at her. She can see the firelight flickering behind his eyes, and wonders if that's her imagination or perhaps something elvish. "It might be interesting to go into business for myself, for a change. Far away from Antiva, of course..." He dismisses that thought with a brisk shake of his head. "But for now, naturally, I go where you go." He grins at her, sudden and blinding. "Come, now; enough chit-chat. Talking about the Crows summons them, you know. Any Antivan fishwife could tell you so."

Marian stays where she is and watches Zevran get up and walk away; part of her is checking for any lingering weakness in his stride, and part of her is wondering what to make of him. They can't afford to keep him a prisoner much longer; not only does it deprive them of the potential benefits he may bring to the table, it uses an additional resource to keep him guarded. 

"Everything all right?" Alistair asks, a little anxious, and Marian nods. She hadn't noticed him come over, but she's apparently grown used to the way he can sneak up on her, and she's grateful that she's stopped having fits every time he does it. 

"I'm still not sure what to do about him," Marian says, tipping her head at Zevran's retreating back.

"I can take first watch, at the very least," Alistair offers.

"And Sten for second?" Marian asks, and when he nods she pushes herself to her feet. "Thanks, Alistair," she says, smiling at him before she goes to find Sten and tell him the good news.

The next day is more exciting; they're ambushed by bandits early in the morning, and Marian nearly loses a chunk out of her shoulder to a particularly cunning and stealthy rogue. Wynne heals her well enough to get back on the road, but wounds of this nature require rest and care, two things they can't afford at this precise moment.

Later that day, they top a rise that looks out over Lothering. Or rather, what remains of Lothering. The darkspawn horde has burnt it to the ground and sown blighted, black seeds of the taint in the soil. There is no movement anywhere, neither birds nor bees, not even the smallest blade of grass moving in the wind.

There is silence for a long moment before Marian says, "Let's go around."

As they help Bodahn shift the cart off the road, as they begin the long, backbreaking work of trudging through damp and grassy sod, as they skirt Lothering at such a distance that they can't even smell the smoke anymore, she still can't keep her eyes away from the place that used to be her mother's home, so far away that the tiny river that used to flow through Lothering is just a speck. _Please, Maker,_ she begs. _Please_.

But there is no answer, and she knows there never will be an answer. The Maker has turned His gaze from His children, and here is the proof.

The only warning she gets is a sudden roil of nausea in her gut. No, it's not in her gut – it is, but it isn't, but – What is _wrong_ with her?

"There's darkspawn ahead," Alistair says at the same moment, drawing his sword. Then he snaps his head to the side, as if he's listening to something she can't hear. "And to the right. They're trying to box us in." 

"Bodahn, get out of here!" Marian cries, and Bodahn slaps the reins across the oxen's backs, urging them to greater speed. The darkspawn draw nearer and nearer, running at impossible speeds, and she watches Bodahn anxiously, willing him to get away. She sets three darkspawn on fire who thought the cart would be an easy target and they turn on her, hissing.

They're outnumbered at least three to one, but Sten has already taken the head off of one of the three darkspawn he's fighting at the same time, and Marian takes a deep breath and sets to her work.

The battle goes well enough until Cú's drawn out of position behind her and she's too busy frying a genlock to notice that her back is unguarded. Zevran throws himself at her, and she dodges him, bringing her staff around – _Really_? He's going to try this _now_? – but he's fighting another darkspawn, striking with hands and feet and knees, and it takes her a shocked second to realize what's going on and finish the thing off with an ice spell.

"How did you ever manage without me?" he says, smirking at her. 

Marian makes a split-second decision, drawing her dagger and tossing it to Zevran, hilt-first. "Make yourself useful," she snaps at him, her eyebrows raised. "There's work to be done."

"At your command, _bellissima_ ," Zevran says with a bow, and disappears before she can do more than glare.

When the darkspawn are dead, Alistair and Marian check their companions over for bites and scratches before she sends them on after Bodahn. The bodies must be burnt, and as Grey Wardens, they're the only ones who can do it safely. 

They can't do anything about the smell, though. Marian holds the fire spell as hot as she can and as long as she can, and when they're smoldering sluggishly, she and Alistair retreat upwind to wait. 

"I felt them," she says eventually. "The darkspawn. Like you said, like a sickness in my mind." She can feel his eyes on her, but she doesn't want to look at him and show him her weakness.

"Are you all right?"

Marian shrugs. "My shoulder aches a bit," she says, deliberately misunderstanding him. 

"Funny," Alistair says, dry and sarcastic. After a moment, his hand settles on her undamaged shoulder, huge against her skinny build, heavy with his gauntlet, supportive and bracing. "Welcome to the Grey Wardens," he says softly. 

They stand there for hours, until the darkspawn are nothing but a huge pile of oily ashes, and then they set out to rejoin the others. 

Her companions have made camp by the time Marian and Alistair finally trudge in. Wynne has a kettle of hot water waiting for them so they can wash the darkspawn blood from their skin, and then their armor. By the time they're finished, Marian is _starving_ , and so is Alistair, by the wistful glances he's aiming at the stewpot. She waves him away to eat, and instead of following him, she sits down next to Zevran, who is sitting on a log conveniently near the fire.

He could have let that darkspawn attack her. He could have stayed out of the battle entirely. None of them would have faulted him, especially unarmed against darkspawn. 

She still can't make herself trust him. She's not _that_ good at managing her emotions. But it's time she offered him the outward trappings of trust. 

That doesn't mean they won't be wary. 

"Thank you, Zevran," Marian says. She's sincere in her gratitude. She hopes he can hear that. 

He inclines his head, smiling at her, and then he offers her the dagger she'd taken from her belt. She takes it – it is hers, after all, and she's fond of it. In its place, she offers him two daggers she'd picked up off the bandits this morning. She remembers quite well Zevran's ambush on the road, and he'd been fighting with two daggers at the time. These are not those daggers – she's not sure where they've got to – but these should do as well.

Zevran doesn't take them immediately. He watches her instead, like he's looking for the trap. After a moment of this, she raises her eyebrows at him, and he relaxes with a laugh, taking the daggers. "So I'm no longer a threat?" he says, as if that's patently ridiculous.

It is, of course.

"No," Marian says, and she's rewarded for her honesty with a smile, half-hidden as he glances away. "But it's foolish to pretend that our lives are safe. You need to be able to protect yourself. We can't afford to do it for you."

"I rather thought I was the one protecting you earlier," he says, stung. 

Marian keeps her face as still as she can, but she suspects her amusement is not as well hidden as she'd like it to be. 

Zevran sighs theatrically. "Cruel woman," he accuses her, and she grins sharp and wicked before getting up to lay claim to her share of food before Alistair eats it all. 

\---

As they travel east, away from blighted Lothering, there are more and more people on the road: merchants, soldiers, farmers and refugees, and all of them take a second look at the strange sight Marian and her party presents. Most of them are looking at Sten. She wouldn't be surprised if he were the first Qunari to be seen in Ferelden in living memory. Marian, Wynne, and Morrigan attract their fair share of attention, too, and it's not kind. People are scared, and mages are easy to blame for nearly anything. 

Even so, some people aren't too choosy about their dinner companions, and by the time they approach South Reach, they're regularly sharing that night's campsite, usually with a merchant party. Marian lets Bodahn do the talking, as he seems to be good at it, and she's satisfied with the results. He swaps stories with the other merchants like a professional. She comes to rely on his reading of the people they meet more and more. How is she so lucky in her friends?

As the days go by, her lessons with Leliana are finally starting to come easier. She's not making Leliana laugh anymore, at least, and she doesn't think that's from kindness alone. They work on her balance, on her awareness of what's going on around her, and she can already see a difference in the way she stands, in her muscles, even in the way she looks at the world. She's so sore every night, on top of aching legs from all the walking, but Wynne is always handy with a rejuvenation spell. She's always handy with a lecture, too, but that's both familiar and comforting, a memory of an earlier time.

She knows the others watch her and Leliana practice knifefighting – she can hear Zevran laughing when she takes a spill – but lately Alistair watches her _all the time_ , playing with Cú, talking enchantment with Sandal, even when she's comparing magic notes with Morrigan. She can feel his eyes on her in the little hairs on the back of her neck. But when she turns to look at him, he's always doing something else with the kind of determined air that discourages any questions. 

He might be extra vigilant right now because of Zevran, and if that's all it is, then his strange behavior at least makes sense. But... maybe that's not all it is.

Marian cuts off that train of thought before she falls even further into madness. Alistair does not have a thing for her. He's just protective, and they're friends, and that's all there is to it. 

And if sometimes she pretends otherwise when she's all alone at night in her tent, then... well, he's not the first friend she's fantasized about with her fingers between her thighs, and it harms no one but herself. Even if it's hard to look at him afterward. Even if it makes her wonder what he looks like under all that armor, whether that smooth golden skin goes all the way down. She's strong. She can deal with it.

Right?

\---

There's a campground several miles from Denerim where the larger merchants leave the parts of their caravans that don't need to come into the city, Bodahn tells her. It's far enough, she decides, and they rent a small space in the back. She leaves most of her party there, except for Leliana, Alistair, whose sister Marian has not forgotten, and Cú, who is reluctant to be parted from her.

The roads to Denerim are crowded, and it takes over an hour to walk the miles to the city gates, but for once she doesn't begrudge the time – she's never seen anything like Denerim. The walls stretch for miles, and people have lived against the outside walls for so long that there are real houses built up against the walls, with little dirt roads winding between them. Marian even sees a pub as they draw closer. 

And there are so many people! The crowd throngs tightly as they move closer to the gates, packing in so that they can go through, and Marian hugs herself to keep her arms away from strangers. Marian's beginning to feel a bit sheltered, like a country bumpkin, and more than a bit panicky. She's never been around this many people at once, or in a crowd of people she doesn't know, and suddenly she doesn't want to be touched, not by _anyone_.

She drops one hand to Cú's back and something about the tension in her fingers must alert him, because he starts to growl, a deep, nearly inaudible growl that makes people give him a few precious inches of space. With that space comes room to breathe. 

The guards aren't actually stopping anyone, just looking them over – for what she can't begin to guess, because the obvious answer of weapons is clearly incorrect, watching three mercenary groups pass without a word – and Marian and her friends pass through the giant gate and into the city.

The crowd starts to disperse almost at once, streams of people splitting off in every direction, and Marian draws up against a building and looks around, a little wildly. It's easy to say they'll go to Denerim and find Brother Genitivi, but now that they're here, she's no idea how to _find_ anyone in this morass. 

When she says so out loud, Leliana takes her arm, linking their elbows together, and gently draws her back into the street, where the majority of the crowd is moving straight as an arrow toward the center of the city. Alistair and Cú follow, Alistair talking to Cú, though the noise of the crowd drowns him out. She wonders what he's saying. "Someone in the merchant district will know where to find him," Leliana says to her, drawing Marian's attention. "All we have to do is ask."

Leliana seems to know where she's going, so Marian allows her to lead. Leliana keeps her arm, patting it absently, pointing out interesting things on the way. The crowds shrink as they go, and soon, Marian is better. Embarrassed, but better. She'd just... she'd never really thought about how many people there might be, and how it might feel to have all of those strangers in her personal space, that's all. And then she'd had a totally minor and completely mortifying panic attack. 

Cú presses against her leg as they walk, and she feels better. At least _one_ person isn't going to judge her; oh, not that Alistair and Leliana will judge her, exactly, but she wishes she hadn't reacted the way she had. She doesn't want them to think she's weak.

Marian slides her fingers under Cú's collar and holds tight to his fur. 

The market district is a huge, wide-open space on the north side of the city, and finally there's a little room to breathe and space to stop and think about what to do next. The people keep coming and going, though, an ever-shifting sea of dwarves and humans and elves, with everyone focused on their business, their tasks. Many of them don't even look around. 

There's a huge Chantry to her left, and Marian points it out. Leliana nods, and Alistair uses his huge shoulders to cut a path through the torrent of people; it's easy to follow along after him, like baby ducks following their mother. 

The Revered Mother is happy to help them along their way – for a small donation, of course – and directs them to a small house a few blocks away on the other side of the market square. Alistair leads the way again, and again it's easier to get through the crowd; it's hard not to think of him as protecting her, not when her shadow could fit itself inside his with room to spare, when there's concern in his eyes when he glances over his shoulder at her.

 _Stop it_ , she orders herself. 

Genitivi's house is small, unassuming, set in a row of up-and-down houses, all exactly alike. Luckily, their directions are good, and Alistair knocks on what Marian is almost sure is the right door.

And then they wait. And wait, and _wait_. Marian knocks again at the door, but still there's no answer, and she glances at Alistair and Leliana before she shrugs and tries the latch. It's not locked, and she nudges the door open, calling Brother Genitivi's name. No one answers until they actually walk into the house itself and a young man stops them in the front hall. 

Marian wishes she could say that Weylon struck her as odd straight off – in retrospect, he had been rather odd, twitchy and white while they're talking, looking around as if for help when she asks him basic questions – but instead she takes him at his word and grills him for information about the missing Genitivi, and about the man himself and his research. 

She doesn't notice anything strange until Weylon directly contradicts himself inside of two sentences. She presses him then, suddenly suspicious, narrowing her eyes, and questions him until he suddenly snarls at her and lunges forward, his hands reaching for her neck.

He's unarmed and unarmored. They put him down inside of twenty seconds and Marian's left staring at a body on the floor.

"What was _that_?" she asks no one in particular.

They search the house thoroughly and find the desiccated remains of another body in the back bedroom, one that by the smell had clearly been there for weeks. Marian pinches her nose and goes only so close as she has to in order to reach the journals sitting stacked by the body. She backs away, looking at the body all the while, and says a prayer for his soul before turning away.

"I want to look through these before we go," Marian says to Alistair and Leliana. "There might be something here we need – a map, or notes, or anything."

Leliana offers to take one of the notebooks, and Marian agrees, leaving poor Alistair to deal with the bodies. She offers him a rueful smile, one he returns, before finding a room with a chair to sit in. She searches the journal closely, but it's only Genitivi's research assistant's journal. His name had been Weylon, but he's nothing like the man she'd met in the hallway. The man they'd killed must have been an imposter. Who would do something like this? And _why_? It all seems so senseless. 

Marian lifts her head from the book, taking a deep breath to seat herself solidly in the real world, and Leliana looks up at the sound. "Have you found something?"

"Nothing that will help us," Marian says, frowning. She puts the book down. 

"This one is Genitivi's research notes," Leliana says, passing it over. "You may find something I have not. I can help Alistair dispose of the bodies."

Marian smiles gratefully. Leliana smiles back and leaves Marian to her work. This is something she's truly good at, and she's become painfully aware this past month of just how many things don't fall into that category. It feels good to really be able to contribute something beyond the ability to actually make a decision, something others seem to lack.

She turns the pages quickly until she finds the place where Genitivi's theoretical research starts to intersect with the real world. Harvard the Aegis left Tevinter with Andraste's ashes and brought them home, to the places of the Alamarri. Genitivi had studied Andraste's Birth Rock closely, both the one here in Denerim and one planted in Jader, and had painstakingly traced Harvard's path through Orlais and into Ferelden. 

The last page is a sketchy map of Ferelden. Someone has made a mark in the lower reaches of the Frostbacks, and there's writing next to it in a large, messy hand: _HAVEN?_

Marian frowns, digging in her pack for her own map. Comparing the two, she quickly finds the spot marked on Genitivi's map, but there's nothing there on hers. That doesn't mean too much, of course; there are a lot of tiny villages that no one's ever heard of. Most of them aren't even big enough to have names. 

It's a lead, at least, and that's what they needed. She folds up her map and closes the journal, thinking hard as she does. She'd been playing along, for the most part. She doesn't believe in the legends about the Urn of Andraste, or that it even exists anymore, if it ever did. But someone thought it important to divert anyone looking for Genitivi to what she's quite sure was a well-prepared ambush; important enough to kill, to leave an imposter here just in case anyone else came looking. Might that mean they know something she doesn't?

It's a good question, but one she won't be able to answer without more information, she decides, sweeping everything into her pack and standing. It's time to go, before the watch decides to investigate the smell.


	27. The Rose

"I've got a location," Marian tells Alistair and Leliana once they're outside Genitivi's house. "Genitivi may not be there anymore, but at least it's somewhere to start."

Naturally, it's across the entire country, which is charitably a week and a half if the roads past Redcliffe are being maintained, but she'll talk to Bodahn about that later – it may end up faster to take the North Road instead, which is supposed to be wider and more thoroughly paved than the West Road. 

They're done here, so it's time for their other errand. Marian glances at Alistair, raising her eyebrows. Alistair goes blank for a moment before understanding floods his face and he nods, though it's hesitant and he looks unsure of himself.

Well, she can understand that. Meeting her sister for the first time – that had been an experience and a half, and she'd been sure of her reception.

"Alistair and I have an errand to run," Marian says to Leliana. "Will you take Cú and we'll meet you in – what do you think, Alistair? Two hours?"

Leliana agrees happily, though it's difficult to persuade Cú to leave Marian. In the end, she has to bribe him with the promise of delicious things. 

"Any idea where to find her?" Marian asks Alistair.

"I have an address..." Alistair says doubtfully, looking around like his sister's house is going to pop up out of the ground if he wants it badly enough. 

"All right," Marian says, gesturing for him to precede her. "Lead on, ser knight."

It takes a few minutes for Alistair to get his bearings, but once he does, he leads Marian through the market square's crowds to a small, shabby house near the north wall. He stops in front of it. "That's her house," he says. 

He's just standing in the road, staring at the door like it's got all the answers he's been looking for. Marian stands beside him, waiting for him to do something, even if it's to turn and walk away, but he's either thinking hard or frozen. 

"Are you sure you want me here?" she asks gently.

"Maker, no, don't go," he says at once, turning huge, horrified eyes on her. "Do I seem a little nervous? I am. I really don't know what to expect, but... I'd like you to be there with me. If you're willing." He's talking so fast it's as much as she can do just to keep up with what he's saying. His nerves are clearly getting the better of him. She's never seen him like this, so hopeful and at the same time so anxious that he's on his way to vibrating out of his skin.

"Come on, then," Marian says, raising her eyebrows expectantly at him. When he starts to protest, to talk about coming back later, she sighs and takes his hand, firmly pushing away the hunger for touch that's begun to grow so strong despite her best efforts, and leads him to his sister's door. She lets go there. She won't do this for him. He has to choose.

"Will she even know who I am?" he asks, staring at the door. "Does she even know I exist? My sister," he says, trying the words out his mouth. "That sounds very strange... sister. _Siiiissster_." He sighs, shaking his head. "Now I'm babbling. Let's just... Let's go."

Alistair raises his fist to the door, and hesitates one more time – Maker's _sake_ , Marian thinks with a silent groan – but he sticks it out this time, rapping firmly three times before dropping his hand. The door opens, but it's not the tall redhead from Alistair's dream that Marian's expecting; it's a tiny blonde toddler in swaddling clothes, peering at them around a fist crammed in her mouth. 

Marian glances at Alistair, who's staring at the child like she's a rampaging mabari, and sighs. She crouches down and smiles gently. "Is your mother home, darling?" 

The girl nods, and then turns around and disappears into the house, leaving the door open. Marian stands and shoves Alistair inside, following him and closing the door behind her. 

"Er," Alistair says, looking around at the tiny, crowded house. There's no one here, not even the tiny child who'd answered the door, but there's a doorway to another room in the back. Someone could be back there. "Hello?"

After a moment, a tall redhead strides into the room, staring hard at them. She's the spitting image of Alistair's dream sister, and Marian wonders: if Alistair's never met her before, how did the demon know what she looked like? For that matter, had her father really looked like her father, or was the demon using her decade-old memories to shape their own personal torment? She can't remember whether he'd aged at all, or if he'd been just the way she remembered him. She can't remember if he'd looked like Malcolm Hawke at all, or whether he'd been the merest semblance to which her mind had attached identity. She doesn't want to remember. 

"Eh? You have linens to wash?" Goldanna says, briskly drying her hands on a towel hooked to her belt. "I charge three bits on the bundle, you won't find better. And don't trust what that Natalia woman tells you either, she's foreign and she'll rob you blind."

There's something practiced and slick about her delivery, something that says she's said the same thing to a hundred people and hated it every time. And if Marian were actually in the market for a washerwoman, she'd be leaving and searching out that Natalia; she doesn't trust the look in Goldanna's eye when she scrutinizes Alistair from head to toe. It's like she's looking for the coin purse, and she's not too particular about what she has to do to get her hands on it.

Marian has a bad feeling about this.

"I'm... not here to have any wash done," Alistair says, glancing uncertainly at Marian before turning back and taking a breath. "My name's Alistair. I'm..." He swallows nervously. "Well, this may sound sort of strange, but are you Goldanna? If so, I suppose... I'm your brother."

It goes poorly.

If she'd had the slightest bit of sense, Marian would have whisked them both away the instant the vitriol started, but Alistair is so clearly hopeful that he can make this work, that he can turn this into the idealized family reunion he wants so desperately that Marian keeps quiet, even when Goldanna starts to have a go at her. Alistair rises magnificently to her defense, in sharp contrast to the way he'd just let Goldanna say whatever she liked to him, which says a lot to Marian about what he thinks he deserves. She suggests that they go before things get out of hand.

They leave Goldanna's house behind. It's only been twenty minutes or so since they'd left Leliana, and Marian suggests that they wander the market to see if they can find her instead of waiting for the rendezvous. 

She doesn't know what to say to him. He's so desperately unhappy now, so dejected, so different from his excited, nervous hope before. She aches for him. He deserves the family that he's missing so badly. Marian wants to turn right around and give Goldanna several pieces of her mind, starting with how not to be a spiteful bitch. That won't help anything or give him what he wants, she knows, but that doesn't stop the urge.

"That was... not what I expected, to put it lightly," a despondent Alistair says after a while. He doesn't seem to want to look at her; they're in one of the poorer areas, and it's not so crowded here that she can't hear him, so they can talk as they walk. She just hadn't thought he would _want_ to talk about it. If she'd been in his situation, she'd be licking her wounds for a month. " _This_ is the family I've been wondering about all my life? That _shrew_ is my sister? I can't believe it."

"I have to admit, it's hard to see a family resemblance," Marian says lightly. She's not sure of her ground here.

"I... I guess I was expecting her to accept me without question. Isn't that what family is supposed to do?" He's so damned _wistful_ that she nearly reaches for him, to comfort and to hold, and she has to dig her nails sharply into her palm to make sure she doesn't. He's staring off into the distance, lost in his own mind. "I feel..." He sighs, a long, disheartened gust of breath. "I feel like a complete idiot."

"You're not an idiot," she says immediately, stung by the idea that he could think so little of himself. "You didn't deserve any of that."

Alistair laughs, bitter in a way she's never heard from him. It hurts. He's not supposed to be that person, and it feels wrong coming from him. "I suppose not," he says. "But it's not what I wanted, either, and I'll never get it."

"You don't know that," she says, hoping against hope that she's right.

"There's no one left," he says with an unhappy shrug. "My mother and father are gone, and so is Cailan. Even Duncan."

 _They're not the only ones who care about you_. It's cowardice that keeps it from him at this point. She's willing to admit that, if only to herself. But she might have found a way to tell him that, if she weren't so thoroughly convinced that it's not what he needs to hear right now. 

"Alistair," she says gently, taking him by the elbow so he'll look at her. They stop walking in the middle of the street, people flowing around them, but she doesn't give them a moment's thought now; she's focused on him. "You have to protect yourself. Don't think I didn't notice back there, the way you let her talk to you."

He shrugs wearily. "What was I going to say? It's her house."

"That's not what I mean," Marian says, angry with herself. She's supposed to be the one with the words, and here she is, fumbling like a schoolgirl. "I mean that she can't hurt you if you don't let her." She steps closer. She can't maintain her careful distance, not now. "You wear your heart on your sleeve," she says softly, looking him in the eye. She knows she'll probably hurt him, and the irony of that doesn't escape her, but she wants so badly for this kind of thing never to happen to him again. "It's going to hurt you. It already has. There are people who will step all over it to get what they want, and you can't let them. You have to look out for yourself." 

She loves his honesty, his openness, and the idea that she's urging him to change that is repulsive; but for all that he seems intent on putting his shield between them and their enemies, he is curiously unwilling to shield himself.

There's so much she's not saying. There's so much she _can't_ say. If she had her druthers... Well, her world would look much different right now, that's for sure. And she probably would never have met him. 

The ache that rolls right through her at the thought is becoming an old friend.

"I suppose you're right," Alistair says, his eyes dropping down and away. He doesn't look happy, not by a long shot, but at least he's lost the bitter edge to his mouth, and he's thinking about what she said. He heaves another sigh and looks up. "Let's just go. I don't want to talk about this any more."

She squeezes his elbow before she lets go and they begin to walk again. After another half-hour of aimless wandering, they find Leliana and Cú outside of an Orlesian import shop on the expensive side of the market, and she nearly has to drag Leliana away from the window.

Alistair is quiet the whole way. She glances over her shoulder at him more than once, but he won't meet her eyes. She leaves him be. He doesn't need her pestering him, not after this. 

Their companions are just where she left them, though Wynne is glaring at Zevran as if she's trying to set his head on fire with her eyes. Alistair vanishes into his tent immediately, and doesn't come out for the rest of the night, though when Sten wakes Marian for second watch, she notices that the bowl of stew she'd left outside the flaps of his tent is clean and empty and stacked with the rest. She sits on the log in front of the campfire, or paces the bounds of their campsite, and worries. Wynne finally manages to heal the wound in her shoulder to a ragged scar over breakfast, and then they're off.

The campground is in the triangle formed by the West Road, which brought them to Denerim, and the North Road, which leads first to Amaranthine and then to points west along the northern coastline. Bodahn knows the way to the road, and they set out, walking across the breadth of Ferelden – _again_. 

Alistair is still quiet, though it feels far less inapproachable today. At least he's not actively avoiding human contact. Marian lets him have his space; hopefully he'll come to her soon enough. He has before. 

To her surprise, it's Morrigan who chooses to walk with her. "I have been studying Mother's grimoire," she says, glancing at Marian, eyebrows raised. "Do you wish to hear what I have found?" 

"Of course," Marian says eagerly. 

What Morrigan describes handily puts a spike in Marian's enthusiasm. She shivers. She remembers the way the Fade bent around Flemeth, and the stories that she's heard about the Witch of the Wilds, and wonders what kind of an abomination could be that powerful, that long-lived, and use magic so totally unlike the rest of the world. She can't deny that she's fascinated, even as she's terrified.

But Morrigan – how must she feel, knowing that she's merely a tool, an empty husk to be filled? That the only mother she's ever known cares only for what use she could be? 

"But what are you going to do about it?" Marian asks doubtfully. She'd never go near Flemeth again, if it were her, but that hardly seems like enough. To be always looking over your shoulder in case your mother tries to eat your soul and possess your body... _what a nightmare_ , Marian thinks with another shiver.

"There is only one possible response to this," Morrigan says, and when Marian glances over, Morrigan is staring at her, determined and grim. "Flemeth needs to die."

" _What_?" Marian demands.

Morrigan explains her plan, and while Marian has so many objections, more than she can count, Morrigan slowly, torturously talks her into it, and though Marian's acquiescence is grudging, she means every word. 

Marian is no murderer, or at least she doesn't want to be. She doesn't _want_ to kill Flemeth. She's not even entirely sure that they'll be able to, not with the weight of so many years and all the magic that Flemeth bears so lightly. Nonetheless, she's promised her help now, and Marian keeps her promises. Morrigan drifts away, visibly relieved, and Cú wanders after her, deep in the throes of puppy love.

 _You are a foolish, trusting_ idiot, Marian fumes at herself. She sighs. It's too late now, though; at least it's an errand that can be put off until they're in the area. She hopes that Morrigan will forgive her for not wishing to go too far out of their way. 

Amaranthine is only a day's journey, and there's another massive campground where the Pilgrim's Path splits from the North Road. They stay there for the night and leave early the next morning, striking out along the North Road, which is indeed better paved. They make good time, pushing into the Bannorn before they have to stop for the night. 

Alistair approaches her after they've set up camp. "Can I have a word?" he asks. He doesn't look upset anymore, or bitter in that way that pained her so, but determined. Marian is only too happy to oblige, and he leads them out into the trees where they can talk privately.

Not that their friends would eavesdrop. Of course not.

It's pretty here, warmer than it'd been in the south, with trees bursting with the promise of new life and scrubby little white flowers fully in bloom. Two squirrels chase each other through the tall branches of an oak tree overhead. She watches them bound into the distance, and only when she can't see them anymore does she bring herself back down to earth to find Alistair watching her with a poorly-hidden grin. 

"What?" she demands. She's not so long out of the Tower that she takes this sort of beauty for granted. He declines the bait, shaking his head and looking away. 

"So I've been thinking," Alistair says as they continue to amble through the forest, his hands in his pockets. Marian is professionally jealous of his pockets. _Somehow_ the ass who'd designed her mage robes had forgotten how to include them. She cocks her eyebrow at him curiously. "In Denerim, you told me I needed to look out for myself." He glances at her. "Did you mean that?"

Oh, it is so tempting to take it all back. He'd probably even believe her if she claimed a sudden and debilitating – albeit temporary – apoplexy.

She sighs. He deserves her honesty. "I don't _want_ to mean it," she offers with a grimace. 

Alistair touches her elbow and stops, drawing her to a stop with him. He turns her to face him with little more than the gentle pressure of that hand under her elbow. "Hey," he says. "It's okay. I'm beginning to think that you're right. I need to stop letting everyone else make my decisions for me. I need to take a stand and think about myself for a change, or I'm never going to be happy."

That's what she wants, isn't it? For him to be happy? So why isn't she happy for him?

"Don't do it just because I said so," Marian says, troubled. 

"I'm not," he says, meeting her eyes squarely. He's not lying. She's not sure he knows how, to be honest. But... lying to someone else and lying to oneself are two entirely different things. He could be fooling himself. "What you said, it made sense." He shakes his head. "I wanted the world to work a certain way, the _right_ way. But that's not the way it is. I have to be realistic." 

Marian is still troubled. She's regretting ever having said anything in the first place, even if it had been the truth; she knows how eager he is to please, and while she won't deny that some of her fondest fantasies involving him touch on that, that doesn't mean she's blind to the extent to which he might be led.

But isn't changing that what he's talking about? 

"So long as it's what _you_ want," Marian says in the end, giving up. She could go around in circles about this forever. In the end, it has to be his choice – it's his life. Her role here is supportive friend.

"It is. I should have done this a long time ago," he says firmly. And then Alistair smiles at her, a fond, lopsided grin that makes her breath catch in her throat and her fingers itch to stroke his face, his skin, the red-gold stubble he's grown since he shaved this morning. She wants him so _badly_ , and all the time, even when he's not there. And it's not just the wanting. Marian could deal with that if she had to – she has before, in several different ways. But she _cares_ about him, about his feelings and his future; she's caught herself just watching him sit by the fire, entranced by the flickering firelight on his face. She listens for the sounds of his armor when they're on the move, takes precious time out of a battle to make sure he's all right, trusts him with almost everything. She automatically takes what he thinks into consideration and worries about his reactions to her decisions. She misses him when he's not there.

She's got _feelings_ for him. Oh, damn her to the Void and back – what has she done?

Alistair clears his throat. She realizes she's just been staring at him for an age like she's having a fit. She probably looked possessed. She glances away, working up a grin. "I must have been woolgathering," she says, and she's proud of the way it comes out, almost like she's a normal person and not a maniac, someone who hasn't had a life-altering realization in the span of ten seconds. "I'm so sorry." She looks back at him, the smile plastered on her face, but he's just staring at her, his eyes wide.

"Well," she says brightly. "If that's all, Leliana will be looking for me, I think..." She takes a step backward, and then another. She's not too proud to admit that she's running away to the safety of other people, looking for space to think, for the promise of her solitary tent. 

Marian turns – walking backward through a dimly lit forest seems like a bad idea. Maybe she'll beg off of knife-fighting for tonight and hide out in her tent. She can deal with this. Alistair can't have figured out what she was thinking just from her face, no matter how she must have been looking at him. She'd probably just seemed a little mad, that's all. They'll laugh about it someday. 

And in the meantime, it's time to get her mind in a chokehold and force it to behave. There are ways, ones she's been reluctant to use up until now because they'll probably affect the way she interacts with Alistair, and not in a good way; but if she's already acting strangely around him, then she's in an entirely different kind of trouble. It's a problem, and it's time and past time to fix it.

She actually makes it nearly halfway back to camp. The tight, anxious tension in her chest begins to subside, though still she keeps her head down, walking quickly. She doesn't know where he is, but his stride is much longer than hers; he could catch up to her quite quickly, and Marian doesn't want him asking her what's wrong. She just wants this to go away.

Avoiding problems is her new favorite tactic.

And then Alistair's hand lands on her shoulder. She swears inside, but turns back to him, the same bright smile on her face. It dies when she gets a look at his face, serious and hopeful and nervous all at once, so similar to the way she's feeling that the sight hits her like a blow.

"Wait a minute," he says, fishing in his pocket. "I just – ah," he says triumphantly, taking his hand out of his pocket and opening it to reveal a little rose, a gorgeous, velvety deep scarlet that glows against his skin. It hardly seems crushed at all from living in his pocket. Marian swallows, her smile gone like it'd never been. "Look at this."

"That's lovely," Marian says, her voice a little tight. It is, too; it's been picked just at the point when the bud begins to bloom open, the outer petals unfurling and releasing a beautiful scent that she can smell from here. Not that she's that far away from him; he's come closer, actually, and without her realizing it. When had that happened? "Where did you find that?"

"I picked it in Lothering," Alistair says, stroking the edge of a petal with his thumb. She can't look away, can't stop imagining him stroking her in all sorts of places and in just the same way. At least the inappropriate heat that follows is familiar. Maker have mercy, but she's so _wet_ – but he continues, and she forces herself to focus on his face and not his long, agile fingers. "I remember thinking, how could something so beautiful exist in a place with so much despair and ugliness? I probably should have left it alone, but I couldn't." He looks at her with a sad smile. "The darkspawn would come and their taint would just destroy it. So I've had it ever since."

"Are you going to keep it?" she asks. 

He's watching her so intently that she feels pinned, naked, spread open to show him her soft and squishy insides, like he could read her every thought in the expressions passing over her face. "I thought that I might... give it to you, actually. In a lot of ways, I think the same thing when I look at you." 

He's so fucking _fond_ , affectionate and nervous and open, despite what he'd said earlier about protecting himself. She doesn't know what to do, what to say. She can't breathe. Is he – Does he mean what she thinks he means? Is this... _romantic_? How else is she supposed to interpret this? Do people give their friends flowers? Friendship flowers? _What is going on_?

Her mind runs in circles quite without her permission. It takes a monumental effort of will to force it to stop, but she must, because she could probably do this forever and ever and the only way to settle the emotional minefield she's mired herself in is more information, which actually means talking to Alistair. Out loud. Using words. 

_Oh, Maker_. 

She takes a breath, hoping he doesn't notice the way it trembles in her throat. "You do?"

He takes her hand, turning her palm upward, and puts the rose into it. Her hand closes around it, though she doesn't know which she's trying to keep hold of, the rose or Alistair's thumb, which idly strokes the soft skin in the center of her palm. He doesn't seem inclined to let go, and she's certainly in no state to pull away. It's all she can do not to kiss him. She's nothing left for rational thought.

"I guess it's a bit silly, isn't it?" He smiles ruefully. "I just thought... here I am doing all this complaining, and you haven't exactly been having a good time of it yourself. You've had none of the good experience of being a Grey Warden since your Joining, not a word of thanks or congratulations. It's all been death and fighting and tragedy." 

She doesn't have the words to tell him what that means to her, that he thinks about her that way and that he's been paying attention, but he's wrong. There's been death and fighting and tragedy, nearly more than she can bear; but interspersed with the grief, with the soul-sucking terrors and the fate of the world on their shoulders, he'd managed to make her life just a little bit brighter in quiet, stolen moments between them and the rest of the world. 

"I thought... maybe I could say something," he says, intent on her face. "Tell you what a rare and wonderful thing you are to find amidst all this darkness." 

If he weren't so serious, she'd think he was joking. She barely believes that this is actually happening as it is. "Oh, _Alistair_ ," she says, closing her eyes against the sting under her eyes. She wants to cry a little bit. She's spent so much time telling herself that this can't happen, that he hasn't any feelings for her, that it's hard to let go of her disbelief. 

He smiles a little, a shy, wry thing, shrugging. "I guess it was just an impulse. Was it the wrong one?"

She should let him down gently. He's Maric's bastard son, so he's royalty and far out of her reach; he's her fellow Grey Warden, and that makes him the one person she can't possibly get away from. If they started something, and it ended badly, she has no idea if they could still be friends afterward, or even companions. She has plans for her life after the Blight, and romance doesn't factor into them.

But she's well-acquainted with herself, and while those are good reasons, she'd have jumped him two weeks ago if that's all that was holding her back.

She's scared. She'd had bedfellows in the Circle, most of them women, and those relationships had been fleeting and entirely physical. Everyone knew the rules. Do what you like, don't let the templars find out, take the bloody contraceptives, and _don't get attached_. You never knew who was going to be taken for their Harrowing next, or subject to a templar's whim, or shipped off to another Circle with little or no notice. 

In truth, it had been easy for her. There hadn't been anyone who'd done more than caught her fancy for a night, not until now. She doesn't know what to do with the way that she feels. She doesn't know how to be with him. And if they somehow managed it... would she fall even further for him? An alarming percentage of her mind is already taken over by thoughts of him, what he's doing, what his ass looks like in his slacks, and the idea that it could get worse is terrifying. 

But as terrifying as that is, the thought of turning him away is abhorrent. She can just picture the look on his face – she'd seen it outside of his sister's house, outside of Flemeth's house when he'd learned that Duncan and the rest of the Wardens were dead. 

She can't hurt him that way. She _won't_. She won't allow her fears to be the knife that cuts them both – for she's under no illusions that she would come away unscathed.

"No," Marian admits, taking a shaky breath as the weight of her endless deliberations, of her unspoken desires and her fears falls from her shoulders. She laughs, incredulous with relief. "No, it wasn't." She grins at him, feeling free for the first time in a long time, inviting him to share in her delight.

"I'm glad you like it," Alistair says, and though it hardly seems possible, his grin is wider than hers. They stand there like a pair of idiots too foolish to come in out of the rain, grinning at each other, until he coughs and glances away as his cheeks flush red. "Now if we could move right on past this awkward, embarrassing stage and get right to the steamy bits, I'd appreciate it." He looks back at her with such an exaggeratedly lecherous expression, so reminiscent of Zevran at his worst, that she has to laugh. 

But then...

With her free hand, Marian tucks the rose into her hair. She doesn't miss the way Alistair watches every movement of her fingers, the way his eyes linger on the rose when it's secured; and then she thinks about the soft stroke of his thumb in her palm, which he still hasn't released, about the liquid, wet, _wanting_ way she feels around him, of the fantasies that sustain her in the deepest night alone in her tent.

Then she smiles at him, with the weight of all that feeling, all that tension. He swallows thickly, suddenly no longer amused.

They were standing close before, and she moves even closer, trailing her fingers very delicately down his breastplate, changing her path at the last moment to avoid the spot over his nipple. "That could be arranged," she says softly, looking up at his face through her lashes. She knows this could be considered cruel, but it's only a tease if she's no intention of delivering on her promise. 

She has _every_ intention of delivering.

He laughs, his fingers tightening on her hand in what she thinks is nerves. It's not quite the response she'd hoped for. "Bluff called! Damn! She saw right through me!"

" _Must_ it be a bluff?" Marian murmurs.

"Well, it doesn't _have_ to be," Alistair says suggestively, leaning in with a grin. The tight, twisting tension in her stomach cinches even tighter in shaky anticipation. She's wondered how he kisses, how his mouth might feel over hers, on other places. But then he falters. "I suppose we _are_ in camp. The tent's..." He looks around, finally spotting the light of the campfire behind her. "...right over there. This is true." He sounds nervous now, even more than before. Marian narrows her eyes at him. She's not going to get what she wants tonight, is she?

In truth, it's too soon. She's still shaky with adrenaline, with disbelief, and her stomach is a roiling sack of too many emotions to count. She knows all this, but it's so hard to reason with the need riding her. She'd hoped for... well, this is more than she'd dreamed of, really. She's no business begging for more.

Too bad she can't help herself.

Marian still has her hand on his chest, and she takes a tight hold of the edge of his breastplate and uses it to steady herself as she goes up on her toes to look him straight in the eye. "Alistair, who says we need a _tent_?" 

He goes brick-red right up to his eyebrows. " _Maker_ ," he says faintly, staring at her. He swallows. "I'll be..." Alistair laughs nervously. "I'll be standing over here. Until the blushing stops. Just to be, uh, safe. You know how it is." 

"Wait," she says, before he has the chance to flee. She clings to his breastplate to keep him there – not that he's pushing her away or anything, but she doesn't want him to leave like this. If nothing else, he won't be able to look at her for the rest of the night without blushing anew, and then someone will start teasing them. For herself she doesn't mind, but she does for him. "I'm sorry," she says, offering him a smile. "I can behave, I swear."

Alistair reaches up and tucks the rose more securely into her hair, lingering for a heartbeat before he lets his hand drop. His color is still high, but his nerves seem to have gone for the moment. He's just looking at her, eyes steady and affectionate and so warm that Marian's the one who's blushing now. She can feel it spreading across her face. He's just _looking_ at her. This is ridiculous. 

"Who says _I_ can?" he asks with a raised eyebrow and a grin, and then he gently detaches her hand from his breastplate and goes the rest of the way into camp. Marian closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath, but that doesn't help her racing thoughts, or cool the wildfire that burns inside of her. She'd stoked it on purpose, so it's her own fault she feels this way, but she'd give a lot for any excuse to retire early for the night.

She's still floating when she comes back into camp. She automatically looks for Alistair in his usual place, as far away from Morrigan as he can get and still be near the fire; he's already got his armor off, giving it a cursory once-over. When he notices her, his cheekbones go red again. An answering flush rises in her own cheeks. It's probably too late to hope that the others don't notice, but she drops down next to Alistair, sitting too close to the fire so she can blame it for her color.

"It occurs to me that I didn't thank you," Marian says, drawing her knees up under her chin. 

Alistair smiles down at his hands. "You're welcome." He doesn't look up from his things, and after watching him for a moment, she takes his greaves and helps.

She doesn't know what this makes them, or whether they're on the same page, or if he feels about her the way she feels about him. She doesn't know why he came over all awkward and nervous when most men would have stolen a kiss. But for tonight, she's happy here, warm inside and out, and that's enough.


	28. The Peak

The next morning, Marian's woken by an unfamiliar voice talking with Alistair and Wynne outside of her tent. She dresses and ties up her hair in a hurry, fingers made clumsy by the early hour, and cautiously pokes her head out the flaps of her tent.

Alistair is tending breakfast, and she winces. No matter how much she likes him, she can't always stomach the things he cooks when it's his turn in camp rota. A stranger sits near them, speaking with animation and using his hands to punctuate his words.

Wynne notices Marian first, waves her over and introduces her to Levi Dryden.

He tells her a story, of Duncan, of promises, and of a place the Grey Wardens could call home. The immediate advantages of such a place don't escape her – they'll need a base that can be secured against the rest of the world, and a fortress that nearly withstood a siege sounds like a great place to start. But Marian's not blind, either, and she notices Alistair hanging on Dryden's every word after he brings up Duncan.

She's already made up her mind that they should fulfill Duncan's promise, but she keeps Dryden talking about history and about Sophia while part of her mind mulls over an idea she's just had, and whether it's a fantastic idea or one she'll kick herself over later.

The rest of her attention lies with Dryden, and she listens with unfeigned interest to his stories of Sophia Dryden and the tyrant king Arland, stories which have been handed down in his family for two hundred years while the official histories were lost or revised. They're fascinating, offering a glimpse of the past she's never seen before. The historian's fervor that she feels is an old and delightful friend.

But eventually Dryden runs out of stories, and he looks at her expectantly, waiting for a decision.

"If you'll excuse me," Marian says with a smile. "I have to consult my fellow Grey Warden." Alistair's head comes up at that, and he goes willingly when she pulls him out of earshot of the camp.

"I want to go," she says immediately.

"But what about Arl Eamon? He needs help, and we have no idea how long this could take," Alistair argues, though it's reluctant. He's obviously torn. "There's no reason we have to help Dryden _now_. Soldier's Peak has been there for centuries, it'll keep for a few more."

She knows he's worried, and for that matter, so is she. But she has no reason to believe that anything's happened to change the odd magical stasis that the arl is in, and every reason to have faith in Irving's abilities. If anyone can keep Eamon alive, it's him.

"It's not that far out of our way. We may not be in this part of the country again for months," she says, brow furrowing as she calculates distances. "It probably won't take more than a day. We'll look in, make sure the tunnels are safe for Dryden, and be on our way."

Alistair laughs. "Wasn't it you who said our luck is never that good?" Marian glares at him, and he just grins back at her, unreasonably cheerful for such an early hour of the morning.

Well, and he's not the only one. Her dreams had been delightful, some frankly pornographic, others so soft and romantic that even she's embarrassed, and the rose tucked away safe and secure in one of her potion ingredient boxes has been at the top of her mind since she woke.

"Good morning," she says, smiling up into his eyes.

"It certainly is," Alistair says with a lopsided, affectionate grin. She wants to touch him, and so she does, taking his hand and sliding her fingers between his.

They've done this much before, and while it had been sensual for her, it hadn't been this fraught with meaning. This is touching with intent. Is he all right with that? Would he tell her if he wasn't?

Instead he grips her hand tight in his, looking at her like she's something precious and beautiful. That's a good enough answer, she decides, and goes with it.

Between them, they argue it out; eventually Alistair admits that he wants to go as much as she does, and as far as Marian's concerned, that's the end of the matter. Irving and Eamon can hold on an extra day.

Marian changes into her Warden uniform as soon as they get back to camp, leaving Alistair to deliver the good news. Then he disappears into his tent to change himself, and Marian seizes the opportunity.

"There's a price for our help," Marian tells Dryden, watching him closely. "Tell Alistair everything you know about Duncan. All your stories. He'd appreciate it."

Dryden gives her a startled look, but agrees with no reservations, and Marian offers him breakfast with a smile.

Soldier's Peak is far to the north, almost on the coast of the Waking Sea, and while Dryden says he knows a way through the maze of abandoned underground mines, they get turned around at least three times. Marian would give almost anything for a map right now.

When they finally emerge above ground, Marian's not the only one taking deep breaths of air that doesn't smell like damp and rot.

"There it is," Alistair says, impressed. "That's something, all right."

It's not a true fortress, but more of a fortified manor, with obvious alterations to windows and doors to withstand archers and ballistae. Above all, it's _huge_ , stretching high into the sky. It broods against the sky, grey stone and dull windows, waiting long years to fulfill its purpose.

This will do quite nicely, Marian thinks, looking around with a smile. Cú is ten feet ahead of them, poking his nose into the wild grass that's been left to grow tall, while Alistair and Dryden talk in low voices.

She hopes that Dryden's doing as he agreed, talking to Alistair about the man he so admires. She hopes it helps.

That's when Cú starts to growl in a way that's distinctly not playing, and Marian snaps her head around –

"Fucking _undead_ ," she snarls as she snatches her staff and sets the skeleton hassling Cú on fire. She's the one who'd said this would be safe, isn't she? She'll have to eat crow, and she _hates_ that.

But the undead aren't the only surprise. The ghosts are completely new to her. She's never heard of this actually happening in real life; she'd thought things like these pure fantasy, something the younger apprentices whisper to each other after lights-out. This isn't supposed to happen in the real world. At least the visions of past events are something she's experienced before, but even those are jarring, whisking her out of herself to watch fighting and blood and death. These are all of the things that tear the Veil the most, and they're all the things that the sentient species seem to enjoy above all else.

The Veil is so thin. Something is very wrong here.

Dryden is useless in a fight, but at least he knows enough to hang well back from the fracas, and while Marian might wish for Wynne's soothing magics and Leliana's arrows, she easily falls back into the supportive role she'd employed before Wynne had joined them. It's up to the three of them to clear the fort of all sorts of demons and undead, and while it's hard work, they finally penetrate to the inner keep, where they come face-to-face with a dead woman.

In life, Sophia Dryden was harshly compelling, vivid, inspirational enough to subvert an entire chapter of Grey Wardens from their sworn duty. This spirit infecting her withered, blighted body is the merest echo, twisted into domineering pride.

Marian enjoys the look on its face when they defeat it, probably more than she should.

Levi takes the news better than she would have, though he seems to hold out hope for something to redeem the family name. She doesn't have the heart to disabuse him of that hope just yet. Soldier's Peak will probably do that for her.

In the next vision, Sophia Dryden gives the order, and a Warden mage draws demon after demon from the Fade with only a little magic and a few words that Marian can't help but memorize. She shivers. She shouldn't know this. Some things are too dangerous to be kept whole in the mind. Just because she hasn't met her will's equal yet doesn't mean that she's immune to temptation.

It's still fascinating, though. She's never seen anyone summon a demon before.

The inner keep is infested with skeletons, and Marian fully embraces her support role, which keeps her far in the back and away from the undead. They make her skin crawl.

Avernus surprises her, though. It's been nearly two hundred years – the idea that anyone could still be alive is ludicrous. There he is, though, standing tall and proud, as if he hadn't betrayed every Warden in his unit. Their corpses are still locked in his cages. He looks at them every day, the way he does now, as if they're furniture or art on the walls.

And he's the one who tore open the Veil. He's the one who has to fix it, and she's the one who has to persuade him to do it.

Someday her silver tongue will abandon her, and then she doesn't know what she'll do.

Today she manages to bring him around, though she's no idea what actually did the job in her lecture; Avernus offers Levi what he can, and swears to her that he'll do everything he can, if she and her companions can keep the demons from eating him.

It's a long, hard, grueling fight with just the three of them, and Marian thinks longingly of the might she has assembled, the powerful people that she just left back at camp. She's been criminally stupid in bringing only the three of them. She can't make this mistake again.

They go through nearly every potion Marian has on her, and it's still not over; Avernus is straining with all his might to knit the ragged edges of the Veil, but something is pushing against him from the other side, something powerful. Marian doesn't dare add her magic to his own, for fear of unbalancing him entirely, so all she can do is watch as a desire demon crawls out of the Fade and reaches for them with hungry eyes and a wicked smile.

"Fuck," Marian swears, reaching deep for the last vestiges of her power. She closes the fist of her magic around the desire demon and squeezes hard until it starts to scream. While it's otherwise distracted, Alistair and Cú attack it with a will.

It breaks away from her spell with an obvious effort and turns on her, snarling. They're separated by the room, but Marian's got nothing left, not without drawing on the Fade in a way that leaves her open for all sorts of passengers. It's an awful idea.

Thank the Maker she's been training for things like this. Marian switches her staff to her left hand and draws her dagger, waiting for the attack.

It doesn't come.

The demon smirks at her and then flicks its fingers, and just that easily plunges her into horror beyond end.

She screams, long and loud and endless, but it doesn't help, _nothing_ will ever help this terror. There are little flickering things just beyond her vision, and she knows that if she turns to look at them, they'll kill her, but she can't stay where she is, because something that's been stalking her for her whole life has finally caught up to her. She can't – she _can't_ –

Cú nudges her hand with his nose, whining low in his throat; just like that, the pure, unreasonable terror drains out of her like water, leaving her so shaky and full of adrenaline that she can't breathe. The desire demon must have done something to her, something she couldn't defend against, and she will swallow that bitter pill later, when she has time to think about it.

Now she needs to return the favor, in spades.

Alistair has been keeping the fucking thing busy while she shakes like a child, and she can tell with a glance that he's reaching the ends of his reserves.

"It's nearly there," Avernus says; his strained voice and trembling fingers tell Marian that he's running out, just as she is, and they have to do this now or they'll be overrun.

" _Alistair!_ "

At her cry, Alistair tosses a quick look over his shoulder and then knocks the demon flat on its ass with his shield, burying his sword in its skull when it's down. Its corpse shimmers, fading away and back to the place from which it came, and Avernus seals the Veil with a word.

She can feel the Veil sliding down around her, the way it settles, like water calming after a storm. It soothes the ragged, aching place in her mind where she's overextended her magic. This is better. It's still thin, but it's better.

"Are you all right?" Alistair asks her, and she opens her eyes to smile at him. It's a tired smile, but she's tired, and so is he, from the looks of it. He's gotten away without too much damage, just a cut over his eyebrow and a sort of stiffness to the way he holds his shield arm, as though he strained something. She'll have Wynne check him over back at camp, just to be sure.

"I'm well enough," is all she says, kneeling down to check Cú. He hasn't escaped unscathed either, but he licks her face when she gets close. Marian decides that means he's all right.

Alistair helps her to her feet and she glances at Dryden, who has neatly avoided all of the demons so far. It's an interesting talent, one that's serving him well. He's unharmed, and Avernus is merely tired, he says.

When he asks for her judgement, her mind just stops. Marian hadn't expected anything like this. She doesn't have anything prepared. She doesn't know what to do.

She'd be within her rights to kill him out of hand, and she knows it, but – 

Marian knows that he's dangerous, unprincipled, and driven to find the kinds of answers that have killed so many people in the past, but despite all of that, she can't help feeling a sense of kindred with Avernus. There's so much she wants to know, so many things that they don't have the answers for. She'd pored over the Circle's libraries until her eyes were like to fall out of her head, and debated questions and theories with her fellow apprentices until all hours of the night. There's no end to the things she wants to learn. She wouldn't summon demons to do it, but who's to say that she'll never be tempted?

In her darkest times, sometimes she wonders if the templars aren't right in what they do.

In the end, she extracts an oath from him, to research the _right_ way, with ethics. She'll have to be satisfied with that. She asks Dryden to stay on, and gives her enthusiastic permission for his family to use the Peak as a merchant base. How they'll turn a profit when they're so far removed from the major trading centers she's no idea, but if he says they can do it – well, she's no merchant. Who is she to say otherwise?

She draws Levi away from Avernus and in low tones, she asks him to write her if Avernus ever shows signs of slipping. It's the best she can do for now. After the Blight... When it's over, things should be different. She'll make a new decision then.

It takes Marian and Alistair putting their heads together to get back through the abandoned mines, and even then they might not have done it if Cú hadn't been able to track their earlier trail. When they break through and finally come out into the late spring sunlight, Marian heaves a sigh of relief.

"You were right," Marian admits ruefully. "We have the worst luck."

"Ah, but just think – a demonic invasion thwarted, a Warden base safely rescued. We do good work." Alistair gives her an easy smile and moves a bit closer, bumping the back of her hand against his as they walk.

"And used up all of my potions doing it." Marian checks the place where her magic lives in her mind, and is relieved to see that it's filling quickly. It seems as if the more she uses it, the more there is for her to use. Perhaps it's like a muscle, which needs to be exercised? She puts that thought aside for later and surreptitiously casts a light healing spell on Alistair and on Cú.

Alistair raises his eyebrow at her. Okay, so casting sneaky spells on the former templar isn't going to work. At least she fooled her mabari. "What?" she says to Alistair, daring him to comment. "Maybe I like your face the way it is."

"Then maybe I should stop smashing it into every darkspawn and demon we come across," he says with a laugh, though he's a little flushed in a way Marian's coming to find deeply adorable.

"Maybe you should," she agrees.

The rest of the walk back to camp is quiet, but it's a companionable silence that Marian enjoys very much. She bumps Alistair with her shoulder once, just because he's there, and he smiles down at her and bumps her back.

Leliana jumps up the moment they come back into camp and fusses over them until Marian convinces her that they're all right.

Marian gets what she deserves there, though, because Leliana makes her go through her knife-fighting lessons anyway. "To teach you a lesson about leaving us behind," Leliana says, glaring. _Evil woman_ , Marian fumes, stretching muscles that scream in protest.

In revenge, Marian brings up something she'd remembered last night as she drifted into sleep, something she'd read in one of the histories. "Is it true that Orlesian minstrels are usually spies?"

Leliana turns startled eyes on her. "Where did you hear that?"

"I read it somewhere," Marian says, her voice tight and strained from bending right over at the waist to put her hands on her ankles. "You can usually assume that I've read things somewhere, it'll save you some time."

Leliana unfolds herself and laughs. "And did you not think that this could be historical fact, and no longer true?"

As usual, Leliana makes even the stretching look effortless, beautiful, like music in motion. Marian feels like a statue trying to walk in comparison. She comes up for breath and takes up one dagger of a pair that's been carefully dulled, tossing the other to Leliana.

"That's not an answer," Marian points out, assuming the rest position: knife point-first, low by her waist, with her off hand raised and at the ready.

"No," Leliana says, sinking into the same position, though on her it looks natural. "Not all minstrels are spies, most are just singers and storytellers. But some of them are... are what we call bards."

She comes at Marian then, two quick steps accompanied by two quick slashes. Marian ducks around them and risks a single slash at Leliana's soft stomach, which Leliana slaps away with her free hand. They circle each other, Marian looking for openings as Leliana's taught her.

There never are any, of course, and Marian's not sure she'd recognize one if she saw it. But at least she's looking.

"What's the difference?" Marian asks.

"Many use the two words 'minstrel' and 'bard' interchangeably, but to do so in Orlais would cause misunderstanding. Bards are minstrels, and more. Spies, as you say."

Leliana is far away, in another time, lost in memories. Is this an opening? If Marian were a good person, she'd let the opportunity slip by. Instead she steps forward, hard, and uses the momentum built to drive her knife past Leliana's guard and into her side, just under the curve of her left breast.

Well, it _would_ have gone into her side, if Leliana hadn't woken up at the last moment and somehow, impossibly, twisted away, laughing breathlessly. "Well done!" she says. Marian has to scuttle backward quickly to avoid Leliana's retaliatory strike.

It's better than she's done before. She'll make it work.

"Some say there is a bard order, but I don't think this is true," Leliana says. "Many bards work alone, or in small groups, doing the bidding of a patron who pays for their services. If there is an organization behind it all, no one knows who they are."

"What does a bard do?" Marian asks, curiosity getting the better of her. She's not aware of her knife hand slowly drooping downward until Leliana smacks it, hard. "Ow!"

"Pay attention!" Leliana says, glaring. "That's how you get killed in a knife fight."

"Sorry," Marian says, wishing she could rub her hand. It stings like anything. But she gets back into position anyway, watching Leliana like a hawk.

Leliana circles her. "Isn't it obvious? They infiltrate, steal... sometimes assassinate. It depends on the bard." She slashes at Marian, but Marian's been thinking, and this time she's ready for it; she catches Leliana's dagger on her own, then slaps her arm _hard_ , forcing Leliana's knife down and away. Marian stabs at Leliana's neck quick as lightning, but as fast as she moves, Leliana is even faster; she somehow bends her entire upper body to the right to avoid Marian's blade.

Marian is ready for this, too. It requires only a quick twist of her wrist to stick her knife into Leliana's shoulder in a strike that would have crippled her if the blades weren't blunted.

The applause from the fire behind her shouldn't surprise her, but it does; she aims a glare at Zevran over her shoulder, but that means she can see Alistair too; he's lounging back on his elbows, watching them from across the fire. Watching her, rather, and watching her closely. _Very_ closely. She blushes, _again_. She likes the way he's smiling at her, though, proud and pleased and fond. She smiles back at him before she turns back to check on Leliana.

"Well executed," Leliana congratulates her with a smile. "But you should know I'm going to be even harder on you now."

Marian's groan is long and heart-felt, and makes Leliana laugh.

But she still has questions, about bards and about Orlais, and she thinks somewhere in there might be an answer to a question that's been bothering her and Leliana both recently. She wants to clear the air. She thinks there might be a true friendship hidden somewhere under all the secrets. 

Marian starts to strip off her armor, and Leliana joins her.

"Bards are Orlesian spies, then?" Marian asks.

Leliana nods. "In Orlais there is much rivalry amongst the high-born. They fight over land, influence and the favor of the empress. But they cannot do this openly, because it is impolite." Leliana rolls her eyes, and her opinion is so clear on her face that Marian has to laugh. "In public they wear smiling faces and pretend to be civil. In secret they plot and scheme to destroy each other. It is a Game completely meaningless to anyone but its players."

Politics. It's always the same, isn't it? Some people just have too much time on their hands. 

"You seem to know an awful lot about bards," Marian says, raising her eyebrows.

Leliana sighs. "And I should, shouldn't I, after having spent most of my adult life as one. You've guessed as much, I'm sure." 

Ah. It's comforting to know that Marian hasn't totally missed the mark. Leliana _had_ been hiding something, though she'd never dreamed of anything like _this_. Curiously, Marian's not angry. As she said to Alistair, none of them have known each other very long, and the habit of secrecy is hard to break. 

She is fascinated, though. 

"But does it really matter what I was? What's past is past," Leliana says with an uncomfortable shrug.

"Of course it matters," Marian says, stung. "The truth always matters." 

The straight line of Leliana's shoulders bows, as if under some impossible weight. Marian almost regrets asking. Almost. "I... found myself in Ferelden and sheltered from bad weather in the Chantry. And when the storm passed I just... did not want to leave." But then she smiles, true and brilliant, like the sun coming out. "I like to say the Maker brought me here."

"Come here," Marian orders, and drags Leliana in for a hug. Oh, it is nice to touch people again. She's always been handsy with her friends, and she's missed the little intimacies that give her life flavor and joy. "I know there's more to it," she whispers straight into Leliana's ear. Leliana tries to pull away, startled and stiff in every line of her body, but Marian drags her back. "It doesn't _matter_ ," she says fiercely. "You've a perfect right to your secrets." 

"Marian – " 

"No, I'm serious," Marian says, drawing away so she can look Leliana full in the face. "Just know that you can talk to me when you're ready."

"I – " Leliana composes herself with an effort, but all traces of that beautiful smile are gone from her face, and Marian's the one who did it. It's hard not to feel guilty about that. "Thank you."


	29. The Warning

They press on hard the next day to make up the day they'd used freeing Soldier's Peak, and by the time dusk falls they're well on their way to crossing the Bannorn. If Marian searches the deepest reaches of her memory, she recognizes fragments of this part of the road from that awful journey that brought her to the Circle when she was small. That must mean they've passed Highever. Another day will see them to Lake Calenhad.

Her map tells her that this is the closest she can get to Kirkwall without riding out to the coast. Her family can't possibly be there yet, even if they survived Lothering, but that means very little right now. They're lost to her, and only the Maker knows whether it's only for now or forever.

But she won't give them up for dead just yet. 

Wynne settles down next to her on the log they're calling a bench, stretching her feet out toward the fire. "Oh, it's been a long day," she says with a sigh. "Rest... rest would be welcome."

"Are you all right?" Marian asks, concerned. "You're due a turn in the cart if you need it."

Wynne smiles. "Yes... yes, of course. I am just a little... weary. As you may have noticed, I'm no spring chicken."

How old _is_ Wynne, anyway? It feels like she's always been at the Circle, but that can't actually be true. She must have had a home once, and a family that she was taken from, just like Marian. And Marian has her walking all over Ferelden without thought to her age or concern for her well-being.

Wynne hasn't complained once, though. She goes where she's needed, fights when required, and heals with only a modicum of lecturing. She's only taken offense at Zevran's flagrant lechery, which Marian finds a sign of good taste. 

Perhaps Marian still sees her as her instructor, someone who's not to be approached unless it's about the learning. Or perhaps she's been so wrapped up in Alistair and her own personal tragedies that she couldn't be bothered to think about anything else. If that's so, she's ashamed of herself. She can do better. She _will_ do better. 

"Be glad you aren't a chicken of any description," Marian says with a smile. "If you were, I think someone would have you in the pot before you could say boo."

"Ah, very funny." Wynne stares out over the fire, into the distance where the sky is just letting go of the sun, allowing it to sink behind the horizon. She's quiet for such a long time that Marian returns to her armor, scraping a fragrant bit of mud off the bottom of her boot. "But in all honestly, I do not know how many years I have left in me. I have lived for such a long time. But there is always something else to do, and I have to keep going in order to do it. I think I will be glad when I am... done. " Marian holds her breath; she has the feeling that Wynne has forgotten she's here, listening. It has the feeling of a confession, not something meant for her ears.

But then Wynne turns to her and smiles, and Marian realizes that once again she's underestimated her teacher. Just because Marian's uncomfortable with vulnerability doesn't mean that everyone is. When will she learn that not everyone thinks the way that she does?

And who can Marian interrogate to find out more about Wynne? 

"You're not done yet," Marian says, aiming for comforting. She's probably falling far short of the mark, though. "We still need you."

"Oh, no." Wynne reaches over and pats Marian's hand, for all the world like someone's maiden aunt consoling her over missing the last tea cookie instead of talking about her own _death_. "I'm not the sort of person that leaves things unfinished. I'll see this through, I promise."

Marian turns her hand up, catching Wynne's, and gives it a squeeze. "You'd better," she says, and there's half a threat there that she absolutely means. She's not ready to let her go yet. Then a thought strikes her. "Has Alistair checked in with you since yesterday?"

It turns out that he hadn't, and so Wynne goes round the other side of the fire to check him over and read him the lecture on the benefits of prompt medical care. It's only a sprain, so the lecture is longer than the cure. Alistair gives her his best betrayed eyes, to which Marian laughs heartlessly and wanders off to play with Cú. 

Marian may pay for that later, but it'll be worth it.

The next night they make camp on the northern tip of Lake Calenhad, and the next just south of Gherlen's Pass. She's pushed the pace so hard that she can't believe everyone is keeping up, even Bodahn's oxen, though they're all so tired at night that there's very little chit-chat between a hasty dinner and finding their beds.

They should reach Haven tomorrow night. She doesn't know what they'll find, whether Genitivi's there or not, but at least it'll be the end of this long, infuriating side trip and they can get back to their real purpose. Though they'll need to find _something_ to cure Eamon, since they still need his help... 

Marian turns that over in her mind until she falls asleep.

Come morning, it's her turn to cook breakfast, and even Marian is sick of the lumpy porridge that is the only thing she knows how to make. She needs to learn something else, and quickly, before she sparks a camp revolt.

Or maybe they'll just take her off the rota. That works, too.

The road is winding through the lowest part of the Frostbacks now, and it's starting to get chillier. Marian is still in her Circle robes, and while they're silk, the better to keep hold of the enchantments woven in, they're still thin. She shivers, blowing on her fingers to stave off the cold. 

"Why aren't you wearing these?" Alistair asks, frowning. He's holding out the gloves and boots that go with her Warden armor, the blessedly thick ones made entirely of leather. "You'll catch your death."

"Because I'm an idiot," she says, rueful, but she's properly grateful to him for pointing out her lack of foresight. She puts the gloves on immediately, and uses Alistair for balance as she kicks off her slippers – _slippers_ , what was she thinking? – and tugs on her boots. 

Marian's sure she looks ridiculous, but she's already warmer and that's what counts. 

"Thanks," Marian says with a smile. 

"Can't have you getting frostbite. Who knows if you can set darkspawn on fire with missing fingers?"

It's a joke, but Marian shivers again, and this time it's not due to the cold but the idea of more cold to come. "But it's Cloudreach!" she objects. 

Alistair shrugs. "I saw it snow in Justinian once."

"Why would you tell me that?" she demands, glaring, and stomps away to brood, followed by Alistair's laughter.

They pass a merchant on the road who offers them something he's calling a golem control rod, though Marian's sure it's nothing of the sort. He doesn't want anything for it, though, and she's intrigued by some of the symbols etched into concentric rings around the rod, so she takes it with her thanks, along with the location of the supposed golem.

Around midday they have to leave the road, at least according to the maps; it takes them near an hour to find the dirt track that runs east along a river, leading into the mountains. There's absolutely no way Bodahn can get his cart through the forest and up into this kind of terrain, so she sends him on to Redcliffe with most of their heavy supplies. They'll have to share tents again, and all the extra armor goes with him, along with anything else they can spare.

Marian hesitates with her hand over her personal pack; it's mostly shifts and smalls, some paper and ink, but hidden deep at the bottom are Bethany's marbles and Carver's stuffed toy horse. They have to pack light in order to haul all their food and supplies up the mountain, but she's never been parted from these things, and she's not sure she can bear leaving them behind. She hefts the pack; it's light enough that she can lump it, she decides, and drops it on her share of the gear. 

"Warden," Sten says behind her, and she stands, stretching to relieve the ache in her back, before she turns.

Instantly she knows that this isn't going to go well for her. His face is so different, so alien, that it's hard to register his emotions at the best of times – and she's sure that contributes to the stupid idea she can't shake that he doesn't have many – but even Marian can tell that he's frustrated, and frustrated with _her_. 

It's intimidating, she doesn't mind admitting. She doesn't feel like she's gotten to know him at all, despite all the time they've traveled together. He doesn't respond to her efforts at conversation. He seems to live for the fight and nothing more, and yet he doesn't take joy in it the way she might expect. She doesn't understand him. He seems to like it that way.

But perhaps she should try harder.

"What's the matter?" Marian asks. Suddenly she's not sure what to do with her hands – they're dangling awkwardly. She settles for crossing her arms. Or does that look defensive? It certainly feels that way – 

"Your strategy is interesting," he says, so dry she's nearly parched just listening to him. "Tell me, do you intend to keep going north until it becomes south, and attack the archdemon from the rear?"

Inwardly, she's raging at herself. Damn, damn, _damn_. She should have expected this. Not everyone was happy when she came back with Haven's location. She'd been expecting Morrigan to say something cutting for days, but perhaps she's built up enough capital in that quarter for a reprieve. Instead Morrigan picks at Alistair or has long, fraught debates about magic with Wynne. Marian doesn't care what Morrigan says, or to whom, as long as they can fight together at the end of the day and someone else is on cooking duty. 

But she hadn't been expecting Sten to object. She'd thought he was a soldier, happiest with orders to obey. And she was wrong. She puts her life in his hands daily, and she doesn't know if that's wise. She doesn't know what he'll do with it.

"It would certainly have the novelty of surprise," Marian says, curving her mouth into a deliberate smile that she can't bring herself to feel.

"Truly. It would surprise _me_ if my enemy counter-attacked by running away and climbing a mountain."

Perhaps it's the appearance of cowardice that's set him off. If that's true, then she at least understands his concerns, but doesn't he realize that there are larger things than personal honor at stake here?

"We're not running away," Marian says, frowning. "How can you say that?"

"The archdemon is our goal. And we are heading away from it. To find the charred remnants of a dead woman." His eyes bore into her like gimlets. He's giving her the weight of his expectations, of his frustrations and his skeptical disdain for their task. It's a heavy load. "I will not simply follow in your shadow as you run from battle."

"How far do you expect the eight of us to get against the entire darkspawn horde and the archdemon?" Marian demands. "We need allies, and we need Ferelden's armies."

"That army was broken at Ostagar, and chasing a pot of holy dirt will get you no closer to your goal."

She's never met anyone so unwilling to see the forest for the trees. He won't _listen_ , and if he won't hear her, she can't convince him of anything. Perhaps that's the point, or perhaps he's so frustrated that he's turned to bloody-mindedness as a remedy. 

Marian takes a deep, calming breath. 

"Ferelden's armies are _not_ broken," she points out, as evenly as she can. "Loghain marched them through Lothering on his way to Denerim. I have had reports of their numbers – " Yes, it was from her mother, but it still counts. " – and there's quite enough of them, enough to give the darkspawn pause if we can bolster their ranks with the dwarves and the elves. And we are _not_ running away, either." She summons a wry smile. "Think of this as a strategic detour."

Sten watches her for an age, long enough for Marian to start fidgeting, curling her toes rhythmically inside of her boots to keep it from showing. Somehow she suspects that he'd take it as a weakness, and that's the last impression she wants to give right now.

"Turn and fight," Sten says, finally. "You keep the darkspawn waiting."

And then he just walks away, as if nothing happened. 

Marian scrubs her face with her hand and sighs. _At least it's never boring_ , she tells herself, returning to her packing. 

It's a scant comfort.

She leaves the bag with her Warden uniform for last; she wants to take it quite badly, but she and Alistair have agreed to only wear it when they know it's safe, which nearly defeats the purpose of having it at all.

If only it weren't so distinctive, she thinks. Or if they could alter it... 

Wait. Why can't they _cover_ it?

Marian gets hold of Bodahn straightaway, and he digs through his cart for an age before he comes back up with a stack of fur-lined, belted overtunics. He claims they've been there for donkey's years, and that he doesn't want anything for them, but the one she tries on smells freshly cleaned, not dusty. Bodahn promises to have something lighter waiting for them in Redcliffe when they meet again. Impulsively, she darts in and hugs him. She can tell that he's pleased when she pulls back, even if he grumbles. It's just for show. 

She goes behind a convenient copse of birches to change into her uniform and put the coat on over everything. It practically swallows her whole, reaching to her knees, and the belt wraps her waist twice. She starts to sweat almost immediately, but it'll be worth it, she tells herself, especially once they get further up into the mountains.

Alistair lights up when she goes to him with one of the tunics in her hands and shows him what she's done. He's chafed in his replacement armor, more than she has; for her it's only a matter of being best prepared, but for him, it's something else, something about where he belongs. He'd nearly idolized Duncan, and the rest of the Grey Wardens, and wearing the armor must be a little like being with them again, if only in spirit. When he comes back, fastening the last buckle on his vambrace, he looks better. He looks comfortable.

He also looks a little bit like a bear on his hind legs. And still she wants to kiss him. There's no accounting for taste.

They send Bodahn off to Redcliffe with everything they can spare and turn their sights west, to the long march to Haven.


	30. The Interlude

The terrain is rough and the path they're following is little more than a track through close, bare-branched trees. It would be a cruel, cruel trick if her map is mistaken or a lie and there's nothing up there except snow.

The forest around them is thick with all the signs and smells of spring newly in bloom, even though there's still a distinct chill in the air. The track is small enough that they have to walk single file, and Marian is in the rear, behind Sten. She anticipates very little conversation today.

By the time they stop for a quick lunch, Marian is the most astonishing combination of tired, irritated, and bored out of her mind. When they move out again, Marian takes the first opportunity to walk with someone else, _anyone_ else; she finds herself discussing magic with Morrigan, which is a delightful surprise.

They talk about shapeshifting, and Marian picks up several useful hints that she tucks away for further thought later. Morrigan talks about shapeshifting like it's as natural as breathing to her, as though everyone instinctively knows what it's like to shed the human skin and become something else. It's nothing like the magic Marian learned in the Circle, and it prompts so many questions she doesn't know where to start. Do other magical traditions hold such surprises for her? How long has Morrigan known how? Did Flemeth teach her, or did she come across it on her own?

"Did you grow up in the Wilds?" Marian asks instead. 

Morrigan looks over her shoulder at her in surprise, her eyebrows arched, like no one's ever asked her a simple question before. "I did," she says, turning back to watch her footing. "Why do you ask?"

"I just wondered."

"You wonder a great deal, I think."

Marian laughs. "It's a personal failing," she says. She's no problem poking fun at herself, and she knows her incessant need to know everything can be alien or off-putting to some people. "I apologize if I'm bothering you."

"I did not say I minded," Morrigan says, glancing over her shoulder again. And – is that a _smile_ on her face? "Ask your questions."

Well, who is she to argue with explicit permission to ask anything she likes?

So Morrigan tells Marian about her life, about growing up with birds and animals for company and talking to trees. Marian remembers more than one occasion in her childhood, when Carver and Bethy simply would not stop _pestering_ her, when running away to live with the wolves sounded the most perfect kind of bliss. Morrigan sounds like she enjoyed it too; she's wistful, nostalgic when she talks about it, like her mind is far away in simpler times.

"But one can only remain a child for so long," Morrigan says, waving the past away with an imperious hand.

Marian laughs. "I have a hard time imagining you as a child. It's like you sprang up out of the Wilds fully-grown."

"In truth, I was a most troublesome child," Morrigan says, amused. She bends to duck under the branches of a tree that's growing over the path; Marian bends the branches back so she can pass, and politely holds them for Leliana. "I recall the first time I crept beyond the edge of the Wilds. I did so in animal form, remaining in the shadows and watching these strange townsfolk from afar. I happened upon a noblewoman by her carriage, adorned in sparkling garments the likes of which I had never before seen. I was dazzled."

Zevran is before Morrigan in their ragged line, and Marian can tell that he's listening now. He hid his startled head-tilt quickly, but not quickly enough. She can't blame him. This is... unexpected from someone as remote as Morrigan prefers to be.

Morrigan is lost in the past again. It makes Marian wonder whether Morrigan would rather be there than here. Coming along hadn't been her idea, after all, but Flemeth's.

There's a thought – if Morrigan is meant to be Flemeth's next host, why would Flemeth risk her on such a precarious venture as this?

_Without you they will surely fail. And all will perish under the Blight, even I._

_I give you that which I value above all in this world. I do this because you_ must _succeed._

That must be it. Self-preservation can be powerfully motivating. 

"This, to me, seemed what true wealth and beauty must be," Morrigan continues, unaware of Marian's distraction. Marian hauls herself back to reality by the ear. "I snuck up behind her and stole a hand mirror from the carriage. 'Twas encrusted in gold and crystalline gemstones and I hugged it to my chest with delight as I sped back to the Wilds." Even now, so many years later, there's reflected awe and delight in her voice. _Now_ Marian can picture her, a dirty, skinny little waif in shabby clothes, cradling a sparkling mirror that's half her size.

The mental image is surprisingly adorable, and Marian says as much.

"Bah," Morrigan says, glaring at Marian over her shoulder, though she's not as displeased as she'd like Marian to think; there's a smile tugging at her mouth. Marian grins at her, wide and bright, and Morrigan rolls her eyes and turns back to the path.

"In any event, Flemeth was furious with me. I was a child and had not yet come into my full power, and I had risked discovery for the sake of a pretty bauble." She sighs. "To teach me a lesson, Flemeth took the mirror and smashed it upon the ground. I was heartbroken."

"But you were just a little girl," Marian objects, horrified. Her levity is gone like it never was, blown away with the wind. "That's hardly fair."

"Fair?" Morrigan laughs. It sounds more like herself than she has in weeks, with harsh notes that grate. "What sort of a thing is that to teach a child? No," she says, shaking her head. "Beauty and love are fleeting and have no meaning. Survival has meaning. _Power_ has meaning." She looks over her shoulder at Marian, fierce and cool, refusing any sympathy or pity. This is _normal_ for her, the absolute truth and the veil through which she sees the world, and that might be the worst part of all. "Without those lessons I would not be here today, as difficult as they might have been."

"That's a dangerous philosophy for people like us," Marian says, her brows drawn tight in concern. "Some things are more important than survival."

Marian's braced for a reprimand, but instead it earns her an easing of the fierce tension that lined Morrigan's shoulders and braced her back. "I take your meaning, Warden," she says, and there's a little amusement in her voice, enough that Marian blows out a silent, relieved breath. She doesn't like being flayed with the edge of Morrigan's tongue. She'd rather leave that for Alistair. "Fear not, I have no intent of succumbing to a demon."

_Would that it were that easy_ , Marian thinks, but this she keeps behind her teeth. Morrigan knows, just as every mage knows, that it's not as simple as that.

There's silence for a long while, and Marian's not expecting Morrigan to speak again. She's therefore surprised when Morrigan says, musing as if speaking to herself, "Perhaps it was a lonely life in the Wilds... but such was how it had to be." Marian makes no reply – what does one say to that? – but Morrigan goes on, unfazed by Marian's silence, almost dreaming by the sound of it. "I find myself at times wondering what might have become of the girl with the beautiful, golden mirror..." And then she snorts, dismissing her own whimsy. "But such fantasies have no place amidst reality."

It would pain Marian deeply to dismiss her dreams in such a fashion. For so long, all she's had is her dreams, those of a better future, of finding her family and living the life she ought to have lived. They're part of her. She's so sad for the little girl Morrigan once was, the one with wistful, far-away dreams of beauty and love.

Marian thinks very little of Flemeth's parenting skills.

Morrigan says nothing more, and Marian chooses to leave her to her thoughts.

They make camp a few hours later in a bowl-shaped dell that's probably charmingly picturesque when spring is finished with it, but for now it's bare and perfect for their needs. Marian sends Cú off to hunt for his dinner; he presses against her leg for a moment before he trots away, weaving through the trees until he's out of sight. She stands there and watches him go. She knows he's imprinted on her, that he loves her beyond reason and he'd never leave her, but there are dangers in these woods that no mabari can defeat alone.

_He'll be fine_ , she tells herself, but there's a fine, shivery tension in her stomach that she knows won't subside until Cú returns to her.

Thank the Maker, it's not her turn to cook. Wynne has something of a limited repertoire, but everything she does make is delicious. After dinner, it's Leliana's turn for Marian's time, and then finally she can collapse down next to Alistair, a glorious, sweaty mess.

"Hi," Alistair says, amused. He holds out a rag and she smiles gratefully, wiping off her face.

"Hi yourself."

If she stinks, he doesn't seem to care. Carefully, Marian leans sideways, pressing her shoulder against his, and the thrill that goes through her when he leans back into her is... Oh, she might as well admit it. She has it bad. It's such a little thing, such an _innocent_ thing, and yet she'd happily sit here all night next to him, brushing shoulders like it's going out of style.

So she does. They sit talking for near an hour before Cú comes back to camp, looking as pleased with himself as she's ever seen him. He must have caught something delicious. She makes much of him. So does Alistair, who scratches Cú just where his ear joins his skull, a place that's perpetually itchy. Alistair's proving more experienced with dogs than she expected, considering he'd pretended dogs didn't like him.

"I _knew_ you were lying to get out of holding his head at Ostagar," Marian says, narrowing her eyes at Alistair.

After a startled moment Alistair laughs, abashed. "I can't believe you remember that."

"Believe me, it was memorable," she says drily.

Alistair shakes his head. "I shouldn't have done that," he says, still amused, but also apologetic. "They'd been feeding me stories for weeks about bloodthirsty, vicious mabari. Someone told me one about how the Hound Warriors would feed their mabari the flesh of the vanquished, and I kept having these horrible dreams about giant dogs with giant teeth rending me limb from limb." He takes Cú's muzzle in his hand and gently shakes it. "But you'd never do that, would you?"

Marian leans back on her hands, watching Alistair and Cú wrestle playfully beside her with a smile on her face. It's a good night.

She shares her tent with Leliana that night, and if she pretends she's sharing with someone else entirely... well, no one need ever know but her.

They hurry through tearing the camp down the next morning to leave all the quicker. Cú immediately romps off into the bushy undergrowth, leaving Marian to walk between Wynne and Zevran. The track is slightly wider here, and they could walk two abreast if someone was willing to get particularly cozy. There are people here she wouldn't mind getting that close to, but Zevran isn't one of them. She's not particularly happy with him at her back, either.

Zevran clears his throat.

"Something I can help you with, Zevran?" she tosses over her shoulder. 

"No, no, _cara_. I was hoping there was something I could help _you_ with," he says, so amiable that she just _knows_ he's up to something. No one is this agreeable this early in the morning, not unless they want something.

"Am I to take it that you had something in mind?"

Zevran laughs. "I'm sure I could come up with _several_ things," he says, insinuation thick in his voice. Marian has to roll her eyes or explode. She's thankful that no one's looking at her face. "No, it is only that you are in charge of our little group, are you not? It must be a heavy burden for one so… inexperienced."

A wicked amusement rises, a feeling she has never had any kind of defense against. "Oh, it's awful," Marian says. "No one ever tried to kill me until I met you."

He shrugs his shoulders as if to say _such is the way of things_ – like that's not perfectly infuriating or anything – and then he moves on like she hadn't said a thing. "Might I make a suggestion?"

Marian glances ahead, and the path looks clear enough that she risks turning around to walk backward. "Somehow I doubt I could stop you." Behind Zevran, Leliana is watching them both, obviously entertained.

For all that Zevran has such a suggestive and knowing way about him, he hasn't made a serious effort in her direction yet. Perhaps her reaction to his initial proposition put him off, though she in no way believes he really meant that nonsense about serving a deadly sex goddess. It's a smoke screen, no more – he expects the rejections, and he'd be shocked if she took him at his word.

Not that he wouldn't take advantage of it, of course. Oh, no.

Zevran smiles at her, a slow, inviting curl of his mouth. _He really is terribly handsome_ , Marian acknowledges in the privacy of her own mind, and doesn't he just know it? "Perhaps together we could find a way to... ease your burdens?"

"I thought it might be something like that," Marian says, raising her eyebrows. He doesn't even have the grace to look ashamed; instead he just smiles at her, seemingly saying, _Aren't I adorable?_

Maybe in another time, another place, if she hadn't met Alistair first, if he hadn't tried to kill her... Maybe. But the person she would be in that other place would be so different that they wouldn't be the same person anymore. In this time and this place, this Marian isn't interested.

"Unfortunately, I think I'll have to do that on my own," Marian says with a polite smile, and then she turns around to walk straight. At the head of the line, Alistair is looking at her over his shoulder, concerned. _Are you all right?_

Marian smiles at him; her intent is firm reassurance, but she can feel how her face goes all soft and warm at the sight of him. He grins back at her, and they share the look for an age, or at least until Alistair trips over a gigantic tree root. Sheepishly he turns back to watch where he's going accompanied by a sharp retort from Wynne.

They've just been caught by half of the party making calf eyes at each other, but all Marian can do is laugh.

"I _see_ ," Zevran says behind her, amused. "Not on your own, after all."

Marian groans right out loud.

Over lunch, Marian takes out Genitivi's notebook and her own well-thumbed map and tries to figure out how far they've gone, and how far they might need to go. It's hard with only the approximation of a location, and soon she gives up in disgust. When it comes time to get moving again, Marian sends Cú scouting ahead and takes the opportunity to walk with Alistair instead of subjecting herself to the merciless interrogation she expects from Leliana. 

"We're very subtle," she says, amused.

It takes Alistair a moment to catch her meaning, but then he laughs. "You should have heard what Wynne said to me," he says. "I thought she was a nice old lady, but now... I'm not so sure."

Marian laughs. "Once she caught Jowan sleeping in her class, and she dangled him out of the window for five minutes while she lectured us on the benefits of getting enough sleep." Her amusement fades slowly as her thoughts run along a well-traveled path, from Jowan to what he did, what he turned himself into. Could she have helped him?

She tried, she reminds herself. He made a choice. She's done everything she could for him, and more than she probably should have, to tell the truth. That's enough. She has more than enough to take on without claiming responsibility for Jowan's actions on top of everything.

Alistair has been watching her, she notices when she shakes off the malaise and comes back to reality. He seems a bit worried, though when she smiles, he returns it. "I think that's the first time you've ever talked about the Circle of your own free will," he says. 

Marian grimaces. "It's not..." She tries to think of a way to explain her huge, complicated, conflicting feelings about the Circle in four words or less. 

"You don't have to," Alistair says quickly, worried. 

"I don't mind," Marian says, shaking her head. "Not with you." She's a bit shy saying that, but the way Alistair looks so pleased when she does makes it worth the effort. "It's just – I don't really know how to talk about it," she says, giving up on censoring herself. It'll be hard enough to hit truthful without constantly editing herself. "But if there's something you want to know, you're welcome to ask."

They walk along in silence for a few minutes while Alistair turns that over in his head. They're nearly into the Frostbacks at this point, and the air holds a distinct chill that makes Marian doubly glad of the fur lining in her overtunic. She can hear Cú somewhere ahead, barking – probably at a rabbit, or one of the creepy hairless mountain nugs that somehow survive the freezing winters that Ferelden is famous for. She hopes he's safe and enjoying himself – and that he'll bring back something for the pot. 

"All right, I've got one," Alistair says, catching her attention again. She looks over at him to find him watching her. "How did you come to the Circle in the first place?"

That's easy enough to answer. She describes the epic confrontation between her and the little boy in the market, the fire she'd made without thought or concern for consequences; she skips over the race to warn her siblings in favor of describing the old hags who crowded around to watch as she was taken away by the templar.

That templar had been a good man. Marian wishes she could remember his name.

Her florid description of the boat and the way it smelled, the way it swayed and made her sick, earns her a laugh. She leaves the rest out. It's not important.

Alistair's a good audience, though she'd known that already. He listens and he seems genuinely interested in even her wild theorizing. Marian finds herself discussing the details of primal magic and researching esoteric magical spells. She wasn't expecting him to ask some of the questions he comes up with, either. When she asks, afire with curiosity, he shrugs. "I was trained as a templar," he says, as if she needs the reminder. Though maybe she does – how long has it been since she thought of him as nothing but the templar? Looking back, Marian's ashamed of herself for the way she reacted. She'd been in a bad place, but that's no excuse to take it out on other people. "Templar training involves discipline of the mind, as well as the body. No one got out of there without an education. And I was actually quite good at it." 

Marian's brain near shuts down in shock. Where has Alistair been hiding _this_?

She's never been attracted to someone's _mind_ before. 

Alistair's ears go red, but he grins at her, pleased with himself. "I thought you might like that."

She's helpless against the way her emotions swell and surge against their bounds, affection and desire rolling through her in equal parts. Her heart is ten sizes too big for her chest. She doesn't care who can see, or what anyone thinks – she reaches out and takes his hand, holding it tightly in hers. His skin is warm, far warmer than she'd expected in this chill. It stokes that ceaseless, maddening tension, that heat, that he so often prompts within her with a look or a word or even just the brush of his fingers. "I really want to kiss you right now," she murmurs. 

Alistair squeezes her hand, but while there's interest in his face, and desire, he seems uncertain about both. He seems... hesitant.

"Whatever it is, it's all right," Marian says softly. She's concerned now, but this isn't the place or the time to pry. That'll have to come later, when they're alone. He offers her a grateful smile, and she returns it with interest. 

The path spreads out before them, leading up a steep slope. It's gravel here, wider and graded for easy walking. That's the work of human hands. Marian looks up, suddenly hopeful, and – yes! There's smoke coming from the top of the hill. Even if it's not the precise place they're looking for, it's _somewhere_ , with people. Someone must know where Haven is. This side journey can't be for nothing. She won't allow it.

Hand in hand, Marian and Alistair drive themselves up the slope with eager steps.


	31. The Village

Up the long, treacherous slope they go, and at the top lies a tiny grouping of thatch and wattle huts, laid into the landscape like they've been here forever. There's a man waiting for them at the top of the path, scowling sourly at the sight of them. Marian squeezes Alistair's hand and then lets go. "Hello," she says, a little wary in the face of this stranger's obvious displeasure.

"What are you doing in Haven?" he demands. "There is nothing for you here."

She barely hears the rest of his words. "Then this is truly Haven?" she says, so relieved that she wants to fling her arms into the air and dance. With any kind of luck at all, they'll find Brother Genitivi and be on their way inside of half an hour. They can be done with this ridiculous idea.

The man sneers. "What do you _want_?"

"We're looking for a man named Brother Genitivi," Marian says. "I'm led to believe he's here, somewhere." She casts a dubious glance behind the man, at the few, poor houses that comprise this place. There's a chicken hunting worms not ten feet from where she stands. It's hard to believe that anything here could capture a scholar's interest.

Though there's another path up another steep hill on the opposite edge of the village green. There must be something more up there.

The man – Marian cannot think of him as anything but a guard, not when he's hovering so protectively between her party and the rest of the village – seems to lose interest. "Who?" He shakes his head. "Perhaps Revered Father Eirik will know of whom you speak."

Revered _Father_? What?

When she tries to ask, the guard turns away each of her questions with mounting impatience before ordering her and her companions out of the village. When Marian presses him, he gives grudging permission for them to resupply at the village store, and then stomps away, ignoring her increasingly baffled questions.

A store, in a village this small? Who has need for a store here? A traveling peddler would do them well enough, and free up a building for any number of things. 

It's stupid to focus on insignificant details, Marian knows, but she's learning to trust her instincts when they say that something's not right. And right now, they're screaming. 

The store is across the way, just there. She'd thought to interrogate the shopkeeper next, but as she looks around, she spots a boy in front of one of the houses. He's playing a lonely and silent game with some rocks. 

"Are any of you good with children?" Marian asks thoughtfully.

\---

In the end, she and Leliana approach him by themselves. There's no use in all of them crowding around the boy and turning him shy or scared. She sets the others meandering, and she's gratified to see that Alistair has his shield on his arm instead of hooked on his back. Zevran has his arms crossed, near the hilts of his daggers, and Wynne is using her staff as a walking stick when she needs no such support. They, too, know something is wrong. She's not making things up.

Marian hovers as Leliana opens her mouth to ask the boy a question, but before she gets the chance, the boy looks at them, a dark, knowing set to his face that has no business on a child, and speaks.

" _Come, come, bonny Lynne_  
_Tell us, tell us where you've been_  
_Were you up, were you down_  
_Chasing rabbits ‘round the town_."

He goes on, and on, and _on_ , until Marian is near to screaming, talking about poor bonny Lynne and the awful things that happened to her. 

Then he goes back to his game, and nothing Leliana says can persuade him to give them any more of his attention. 

"What was _that_?" Leliana asks after they've withdrawn, deeply unsettled. Marian knows exactly how she feels. She'd seen something gleaming between the boy's fingers, something that looked very much like a human finger bone. 

_It was something else_ , Marian tells herself. If only she could believe it. 

She takes Leliana and Alistair into the store with her, leaving Alistair to haggle with the shopkeeper in favor of wandering the building, looking for – she doesn't know what, honestly. Something that might explain this place. She drifts between bags and barrels and boxes, stoops to examine the contents of an intriguingly carved chest, and finally turns her eyes toward the back of the store. 

"What are you doing? That's private," the shopkeeper says, his voice rising in what sounds very much like panic. He hurries around the counter and pushes his way in front of her, blocking her way with his whole body. 

"Isn't that part of the store?" Marian asks, raising her eyebrows, biding her time. Alistair is coming; she can see him moving cautiously toward them out of the corner of her eye. In a moment he'll be in striking range. Leliana is somewhere behind her.

"It's none of your concern," the man says, glaring. 

Marian drops her voice, so he has to lean a little closer to hear what she's saying. It comes soft and persuasive from her mouth. "I'm only here looking for my friend," she says, spreading her hands. She's no threat. She's just a girl with too many questions. "Please, can't I just check?"

His face grows dark, eyebrows drawing together. "You have no _right_!" he spits. His hands clench into fists.

If she ever had a chance to persuade him to step aside, she's lost it now.

The shopkeeper takes a swing at her, swearing about interfering lowlanders. It's so easy to read his body language that it feels like she has years to prepare, to call her magic to her spread hands and freeze him in place before Alistair can do more than reach out for his wrist. Marian finds herself enraged by the _pointlessness_ of it all – they're three to his one! What did he expect would happen? She shakes her head at Alistair's enquiring glance. She's fine. 

"Tie him up," Marian orders. "We need answers."

She slips around his frozen body and through the doorway to find out what the shopkeeper had been protecting. At first it looks like nothing, just a storeroom like storerooms everywhere, dusty and crowded with odds and ends that no one has any use for. But there's an alcove at the far end, and that's where she finds the bodies.

One is so fresh that it hasn't started to smell yet, but someone has hacked his limbs from his torso and taken the head away, so that the poor man is only a pile of dismembered limbs. They've left him his armor and shield in a careless pile. She can just see the crest of a white keep on a red hill, which marks him as a knight of Redcliffe.

Poor bastard. He'd come so far, and for what? For _this_? Marian drives back the hot and angry tears with an effort. 

No one should die like this.

The other two are just bones, piled this way and that like they don't matter a bit. 

Marian stares at the grisly scene for a long time before Leliana finds her. "He's reluctant to speak," Leliana says, before she looks around and spots the corpses. She's silent, too, for a long moment. Marian looks over; her eyes are closed and her lips move soundlessly. She's praying for them. 

What good is the Maker going to do them now? They're dead, and all the prayer in the world won't bring them back, or make right what these people have done to their empty shells.

"I think I have a few more questions for him," Marian says tightly, and leaves Leliana to beg an absent god's forgiveness.

" _You_ ," the shopkeeper snaps at her as soon as she passes into his sight. "You don't belong here!"

"I found something else that doesn't belong here." Marian crosses her arms and stares at the man. He's sat in a chair in the middle of the room, and he's kept there solely by Alistair's presence. Even as he spits venom at Marian, he keeps glancing up at Alistair, as if he's afraid.

Alistair is the least scary person she knows. The idea that he's the bogeyman in the room today is an odd one. But she supposes that if all one saw was his muscles, and his height and broad shoulders, and the well-used sword that hangs on his belt, then he might be something to be feared.

Another day, she'll laugh. Another day, she'll tell him the joke, and they'll both laugh. But now…

"Who were those men? Why did you kill them?" Marian demands.

He spits on her. She jerks aside, though it doesn't save her from the spittle. She feels like someone's slapped her.

Alistair hits the shopkeeper, very casually, and he doesn't pull the blow. "Don't do that again," Alistair warns him. He's not even angry. He might as well be at the market. "You won't like what happens."

Marian angrily scrubs her face with the hem of her tunic. Now she's angry and _dirty_ and all she wants to do is burn this blighted abomination of a village to the ground and walk away. 

Now that she thinks about it, it might be easier that way. The huts are only thatch and wattle, daubed with clay. They'd burn beautifully. They'd have plenty of time to find Genitivi before the whole village goes up, and who cares what happens to the villagers? As far as she's concerned, they're all in on it. It'll save her the trouble of dealing with them individually. 

And everything is always so much more beautiful when it's burning. 

It feels so _good_ to let her magic run down her arm, to let loose the tight strictures she has on her power, to allow it to pool in her palm. It doesn't take conscious thought to set it aflame, only the absentminded desire to watch it burn.

And then Alistair's there, big, beautiful, golden Alistair who talks too much and says too little. He grabs her wrist, forcing her to look at him. "What are you _doing_?" he demands.

She stares at him, her eyes wide. For a moment, just for a split second, she wants to turn her hand over and pour her flaming magic over him, to watch him burn alive before her eyes. She can already hear him screaming. It's beautiful, and soothing, and so exciting, and all she has to do is – 

Alistair's eyes sharpen. " _Focus_ , Marian!" He shakes her like a kitten, distracting her for just a second, but it's enough, it's just enough, for her to regain a measure of control. She rips herself away from the Fade with a strangled sob. Her handful of flame dies instantly, leaving her palm stinging.

Marian's left with a sick taste in the back of her throat and a slow, creeping horror that prickles her skin. She'd had a demon riding her. A _demon_. She hadn't noticed the tenor of her thoughts changing. She hadn't noticed anything. And if Alistair hadn't… if he… 

The stinging behind her eyes is just reaction, she tells herself. She has to be so careful. And instead what does she do? She lost control of her emotions, the one thing that must never, ever happen. 

Alistair's watching her carefully, his grip on her wrist so tight. It grounds her. What would she have done if he hadn't been here? "I'm all right," she tells him, carefully steady. At his dubious look, she smiles, though it's a pale, weak thing, a bad imitation of her usual cheer. "I know," she says. "But truly, it's gone. I can tell."

His hand gentles on her wrist, though he doesn't let go. "What happened?" he asks.

She sighs. "There are three bodies in the back," she tells him. "Two are rotted away, but the third… " She gropes for the words, but she can't explain what the sight of that body did to her, the heartsick sorrow and the anger that followed. She's seen more than her share of bodies lately. This should have been nothing new, but… something about that poor murdered man got to her. 

Alistair casts a dark look at their silent prisoner. "Then we have a lot to talk about, don't we?" He looks back at her then, and she can see that he's worried about her still. "Why don't you go talk to Wynne?" he says. His thumb is stroking her wrist, though she thinks he doesn't realize it. It's comforting. "Leliana and I can take care of this." 

A movement at the window by the door catches her attention. The boy is there, the one from before, peering at them through the glass. He sees everything and then he's gone, too fast for her to shout.

"I think we have a problem," Marian says shakily.

\---

They hadn't tied up the shopkeeper because there's no rope to be had, so Marian slaps a force-field on him and they hastily leave the store.

The others are crowded around the door, their backs to her, facing the silent, threatening villagers who have surrounded them on all sides, pressing them against the building. There's so _many_ of them – even if they're all unarmed, they're still menacing by sheer force of numbers.

"There is no need for this," Marian says. Her voice wants to tremble, but she can't let it. Not now. She doesn't want to fight them. It's not fear; how could it be? But she doesn't want to hurt them. 

There's no conversation, though. Someone tries to pull Wynne away by the arm, and someone else throws a large rock at Sten's head, and two of them are coming at Alistair with murder in their eyes…

Avoiding a fight isn't going to be possible, not anymore. Marian angles herself as best she can and pours cold from her bare hands, but she can't freeze them all, not when she feels raw inside where the demon touched her mind. Heart-sick, she draws her little knife and sets to work.

Killing is different when the blood runs down onto her hand. _It'll leave a stain_ , she thinks, gone numb. 

When it's done, she stands over their bodies and just looks at them, wonders what they could possibly be hiding that's worse than _this_. Why was this necessary? Why had they attacked?

"Search the rest of the houses," Marian says to her companions. "If you find anyone else, don't hurt them. We need _answers_ , not more death."

The searches go quickly, because there are only three houses in this place, and Zevran beckons to her from the lintel of one of the houses. His normally cheerful demeanor is gone.

Whatever this is, she doesn't want to know. _She doesn't want to know_. 

Marian swallows down her trepidation, leaving a queasiness in her stomach. Suddenly she is weary beyond belief. She supposes she'd been foolish to hope that this, unlike everything else they've tried to do, would be easy. 

She crosses to Zevran, and they enter a charnel house.

Half of the house, the half to the left of her, is precisely what she expected – a bed, a pot on a fork over the fire, a few chairs, a clothespress. Someone _lives_ here. But to the right of her… the altar is very large, the wall behind it bare as if the altar is the only thing of importance. It's soaked with blood, and so is the wall around it and the wooden floor. Some of the bloodstains are fresh. Some of them are so old they're nearly black. They are all extraordinarily large. One of the stains, an older one, reaches nearly to the toes of her boots.

She cannot reconcile the two sides of the room. Here it is homely, even warm; there is a grisly murder scene. 

"I wonder," Zevran says thoughtfully. She turns her head a little, so that he's just visible out of the corner of her eye. He's not disturbed in the least by the altar, by what it implies. Of course. Why would he be? "The Crows often made sacrifices of blood, and it gave them uncanny abilities."

"What _kind_ of abilities?" Marian demands.

Zevran just shrugs. "It was not wise to pay too much attention."

Marian remains silent for a long time, going through the ramifications in her mind, but even now a part of her is wondering that blood sacrifices work on the non-magical, and why that might be…

That's a dangerous train of thought, and she shuts it down firmly as she turns away. This will not help her solve the puzzle of Haven, or find Brother Genitivi.

She hopes with all her might that he's not one of the nameless skeletons in that man's back room.

\---

More villagers, better-armed ones, block the second path up the hill toward what Marian hopes is the rest of the village. She has no more luck talking to these men than she did the others. Everyone she talks to here is staggeringly dedicated to something she doesn't understand.

But why is this _necessary_? What kind of secret is so terrible that they'll kill, and worse, to keep it?

Marian doesn't participate in the fight, not that they need her. There are six very capable people and a mabari with her. She has no fear of failure. And… she's reluctant to touch the Fade again so soon after the catastrophic failure in her self-control. What if it's still there, waiting for her? _Stalking_ her? What if she can't throw it off this time?

She has no doubt that the rest have noticed, though hopefully only Alistair and perhaps Wynne have any idea why she's behaving so strangely. 

They leave the bodies where they fall and make their way to the top of the hill, which is dominated by a huge, old Chantry that broods watchfully over the village like a sullen templar. It's far too large for a village this size, which could only boast a congregation of twenty, at the most. It is quite old, though. Perhaps it's a relic of an earlier time.

Morrigan pushes open one of the deep, heavy doors, and they file into the Chantry. Someone is holding services, but they're lead by a _man_ ; Marian had forgotten that the guard talked of someone named Revered Father.

None of this makes any sense.

"What is this place?" Marian asks, and then she listens with interest as the Revered Father tries to dismiss her, tries to order her away, tries to intimidate her, all without telling her what this thing they're protecting _is_. 

"We don't owe you any explanations for our actions," Eirik says. "We have a sacred duty; failure to protect Her would be a greater sin." Marian is struck by the strangest thought, that under other circumstances she would have enjoyed meeting him. There's humor written in the laugh lines of his face, conviction in his voice, honesty and steadiness in his eyes as he watches her. He's summing her up just as she is summing him up. They both know what comes next.

She also knows that there won't be any talking him out of this, either. 

"All will be forgiven," Eirik says, as if to himself. 

Marian hesitantly touches the place in her mind where her magic lives. She can't baby it any longer. This battle will require more than her knife skills can provide. It feels better, sturdier, but she can't tell if the demon is still lurking around. She'll have to be far more careful of herself and her emotions. 

She draws magic out of her mind and makes it real, settles her shield over herself with a mental sigh of relief. She hadn't realized how vulnerable going without her shield had felt. 

Marian looks up, meeting Eirik's eyes. "You don't have to do this," she says, grasping for any chance...

"For the Risen Lady!" he cries, and the villagers attack.

Even this fight doesn't take very long, and when it's done, Marian stoops down and closes Eirik's eyes. They'll have to stoke the pyres before they leave if they don't want the bodies to attract demons.

All of this, all of the death, and there's still no signs of Brother Genitivi. Where could he _be_? Could he have left? Marian sends some of her friends back down to the lower village to search again, and the rest comb the Chantry until Leliana finds a secret door set into the wall. The seam is so fine that Marian has to put her nose up to the stones to even see the edges.

"There is a switch, somewhere," Leliana says, her eyes far away as she concentrates on the picklocks in her hands. Marian watches over her shoulder, and tries not to hover. "But it's easier if I… ah!" 

The door falls open two inches.


	32. The Brother

Marian and Leliana set their shoulders into the secret door and reluctantly, it swings open, grinding against the stone floor. When there's enough room, Marian slips through the opening to find herself in a cool, dim library, with three or four candles in a stand lighting one corner of the room. With her little light spell, Marian checks the shadowy places for more villagers, but no one is waiting in this room to spring at them when their backs are turned.

There's a man lying in the light of the candles, and she approaches him cautiously, her staff in hand.

"Who's there?" The man coughs, lifting himself up on his elbow to peer into what must be darkness to him. She moves into the edge of the candle's light so he can see her, but she stops out of arm's reach. This still might be a trap. "Who are you? They... they've sent you to finish it?"

Or maybe not. "Please tell me you're Brother Genitivi," Marian says warily.

"You're not one of them," he says, sighing in relief. "Thank the Maker." Suddenly he sounds unutterably weary, as if the promise of help at last has sapped his strength. Pain draws his face into harsh lines. 

Marian closes the distance, kneeling by him. "Are you hurt?" she asks, alarmed.

"What do you think?" Genitivi snaps, sarcasm thick in his voice. Marian pulls back sharply; she'd been on the verge of casting a healing spell, but she won't use her magic where magic isn't wanted. "Weeks of scant food and water, the torture... oh, I've never felt better!" 

"I'll take that as a yes, shall I?" Marian says, raising her eyebrows.

So far, Brother Genitivi isn't exactly what she expected.

"I apologize. I shouldn't be rude. You're here to help." He sighs. "The leg's not doing so well and... and I can't feel my foot." They both look down at his leg. It's swollen with bruises and cuts, but if his foot is numb... This is beyond Marian's capacity to heal. "Cú, fetch Wynne," she orders.

Cú races away to find Wynne. She knows she shouldn't move him, but there is one thing she can do. Marian puts one hand on Genitivi's knee and one by his ankle and spreads her magic over his wounds in a gentle, soothing wash. Something in his face relaxes, just a little bit. 

"That's better," he says. "Thank you."

"We shouldn't stay here," Alistair says, kneeling on Genitivi's other side. "There are too many ways in and out of this building."

"We can't camp out there, either," Marian points out. She looks up, into Alistair's worried eyes, and shakes her head. _I'm fine_ , she thinks fiercely. _Don't look at me like that_. But she also thinks that telling Alistair not to worry is like asking the sun not to shine. Lately Alistair has started to show signs of being quite remarkably stubborn when he wants to be.

"We can go into the temple," Genitivi says, interrupting her train of thought. "It's old, and the door is sturdy. If we lock it behind us, we should be safe enough. There is only one key. Eirik wore it around his neck."

Alistair gets up and goes out, and after a minute he returns with the most hideously large bronze coin strung on a thick chain. "Is that your key?" Marian asks, nodding at the thing in Alistair's hand.

"Yes," Genitivi says. He pauses, taking a deep breath. "The medallion. I've seen what he did with it, to open the door. We just have to get up the mountain."

Wynne comes in, shepherded by her mabari, and takes the situation in with one sharp glance. Marian lifts her hands, closing them to halt the flow of magic that had been keeping Genitivi comfortable, and discovers that it had been doing the same to her. Now that she's stopped, she's abruptly aware of the places that hurt: the part of her mind that's attached to the Fade, her blistered feet, her staff hand. She sends Cú to gather the rest of her companions. 

She watches Wynne frowning as she examines Genitivi. "Your leg is quite badly broken," Wynne says. "I can set it, and make you more comfortable, but I'm afraid magic is quite out of the question. Your system cannot handle it."

As it turns out, he also has two broken ribs and a concussion and half a million bruises and cuts, and those are going to have to heal themselves, too. Marian will be making elfroot salves all night, it seems. Wynne sets his leg with heartless efficiency and gentle hands, and then Alistair is there to take Genitivi's arm over his shoulders. 

There's a path leading from the back of the Chantry up into the mountain, and Genitivi directs them up it, but it's such slow going with an invalid. Her companions catch up, one by one. Leliana takes Genitivi's other arm, and that helps, but their ponderous, limping pace makes Marian grit her teeth. Every moment she's imagining something jumping out at them from behind the trees, or that rock... or the place in her mind where her magic lives. Her nerves are shot by the time that they get to the top of the mountain path and the door.

It's set into the mountain face, and made from the same pale stone. There's no handles or locks or hinges, only a smooth expanse of stone with a keyhole in the middle. Marian has no idea how the medallion's supposed to open that lock. 

"Here we are," Genitivi says, studying the door. "Give me the medallion, and let's see if I remember..."

He holds out his hand for the medallion; when Alistair gives it over, Genitivi has to let go of Alistair's shoulder in order to take the medallion in both hands. Alistair grabs him just before he topples over. Genitivi thanks him in an abstracted sort of fashion as he studies the medallion in his hands. 

"Yes..." Genitivi holds the thing in his hands, peering at it closely. "You see, it can be manipulated, just like this."

Fascinated, Marian edges closer so she can watch his hands. He twists it lengthways and the medallion separates in his hands, splitting into two pieces. Or, no – it's still joined in the very center by a round bit, like two fans joined at the pins. He twists and turns the medallion's pieces, separating them further into smaller subdivisions until he's holding a mess of metal parts that look like a child's jumble sticks. 

But Genitivi's not done. He bends a group of pieces into line and suddenly, out of nowhere, he has a handle. He manipulates it further and bends parts until the opposite end actually looks like a huge, heavy sort of key.

"And there," Genitivi says. "A key to open the way." He sounds weary, but there's an unmistakable note of pride in his voice, something Marian has to respect. She's not sure she could have done what he just did, and her memory is remarkable. His must be nothing short of amazing. 

He gives her the key when she holds out her hand for it. She turns it over in her hand, looking at the cunning joins, the intricate system of pieces, feeling the weight of it in her palm. What kind of convoluted mind must one have to think up this kind of device? 

The key slides smoothly into the lock, and it turns with a minimum of effort. The door swings on a central bar; it turns easily and quickly when Marian pushes it. Someone is keeping the mechanisms oiled. This door is used often, and it's been used recently. 

"All in," Marian orders, standing aside so Alistair and Genitivi can maneuver themselves through the opening. "Quickly."

Once they're all through, Marian swings the door flush again and watches with curiosity as it falls into place, nearly seamless. The locks fall into place with harsh thunking noises, and just like that, they're safe. Whoever made this place, they hadn't lacked for craftsmanship. 

When she turns, they're at the end of a long, long hallway that leads into the mountain and up, with small flights of stairs at irregular intervals down the hall. It's getting on toward night, and Genitivi needs to rest. So does she, for that matter. "Camp here?" Marian asks of no one in particular, and she's not surprised when no one answers; apparently, no one has anything to say to that. Instead the others lay down their loads and start to unpack the necessaries.

They'll need to set watches against that long expanse of hallway, so Marian organizes that, and sends Leliana down the hall to check for traps. Then she helps Wynne with Brother Genitivi's leg. She doesn't know how he keeps so calm – if it were her, with a leg that badly broken, she'd be screaming. 

She has so many questions she wants to ask him, things she's always wanted to know, but now that she has the opportunity, Marian finds herself tongue-tied, for the first time in her life. There's not much light here beside what they carry themselves, but Zevran is laying a fire; in the meantime, all three mages have produced the small glowing lights, one of the few spells that everyone knows. She can only see a little ways down the hall, but there's a soft, diffuse light coming from the archway at the end; maybe she should go investigate. It's better to know what they're dealing with, isn't it? Maybe there's a door they can lock. 

Marian tells Alistair her plans, but he plucks the key neatly out of her grasp and raises his eyebrows at her irritated hiss. "Have you talked to Wynne yet?" he asks, though he _knows_ full well that she hasn't. All she can do is glare as he walks off – using _her_ escape route.

Oh, he's going to pay for that.

Reluctantly, Marian goes back to Wynne's section of hallway and flops down next to Wynne. "I need to talk to you," Marian says.

"I heard," Wynne says with a slight smile that makes Marian panic. Wynne continues to wrap Genitivi's ribs while Marian's heart tries to climb up her throat and strangle her. Had Wynne heard her talking to Alistair? _What_ had she heard? What had they said? She can't remember. What if – 

Marian calms herself with a heroic effort. She hadn't said anything to Alistair that she's not going to tell Wynne. It's only that... she knows Alistair is on her side. She trusts him in this way. Wynne has been her teacher in the past, but Marian can't forget the way she withheld vital information until they met after her Harrowing, or the way she holds herself slightly aloof – from the rest of their companions, from the ordinary hum-drum of everyday life. 

Oh, who is she fooling? She's afraid that she'll be judged weak. If Wynne is as rules-abiding as she seems, as devout and as Loyalist, she could have a very narrow interpretation of religious law. They're so far from the Circle, but if Wynne takes this badly, when they get back to civilization Marian could be turned into the templars and earmarked for the Rite of Tranquility. Her Grey Warden status wouldn't save her, not after Ostagar. 

She has to stop. The more she thinks about this, the worse her nerves will be. So she carefully blanks her mind, using the slight humming of the Fade as background noise to put herself into a semi-meditative state. 

"Now, then," Wynne says, sitting back on her heels and eyeing Genitivi with satisfaction, like a project that's done, and done well. "Rest."

"Madam Enchanter, if you think I have any intention of lying on my arse when the Temple of Sacred Ashes is within my grasp – " Genitivi says, struggling up onto his elbows, which makes him groan.

Wynne stops him with a hand on his chest. "Absolutely not," she says, raising her eyebrows, daring Genitivi to speak again. He sighs and lays back down, obviously deciding that silence is the better part of valor. "And now, Marian. Would you care to walk with me?"

"To _where_?" Marian asks, laughing a little, incredulous. 

Wynne pins her with a look that she remembers well from her student days. "Is it your wish for everyone to hear what you have to say?"

Chastened, Marian follows her down the hall out of earshot of the others. They meet Alistair on the way. He gives her a slight smile, deeper around the eyes like he's proud of her, and when he passes the key back to her, the brush of their hands lingers longer than it needs to.

Wynne waits for him to pass out of hearing before she says, "I hope you know what you're doing."

"What?" Marian asks, panicking again. She's not ready to talk about them, Maker, not to Wynne.

Wynne shakes her head. "No, never mind. What can I help you with?"

Marian tells the whole story from start to finish, leaving nothing out, not a single word or errant thought. She is no more able to tell Wynne what had disturbed her so about the dead knight than she was Alistair. Even now, the thought of him saddens her more than it should. They'll never be able to find out his name. His family will never know what happened to him. 

_Oh_. 

That's not something she can explain to Wynne, though, so she moves on, to the demon. It had caught her at just the right place, at just the right time, to send her thoughts into a spiral of hate and destruction and rage. In the abstract, she can admire its craft. In the real world, she'd quite like to set _it_ on fire and watch it burn.

But Wynne probably wouldn't appreciate that sort of black humor, so Marian finishes her story and takes a deep breath. Alistair had been right, damn him. She feels better. 

Wynne looks at her for a long moment, searching her face for... something. Marian waits, biting her lip. She can be patient. She _can_. 

"Have you been doing your meditation exercises?" Wynne asks, quite suddenly.

Marian opens her mouth and then closes it again. Marian already knows that the real answer – _there hasn't been time_ – isn't what Wynne wants to hear. And in truth, Marian knows better than to neglect them the way she has. But she'd hardly had time at Ostagar, and in the days since – 

"You know better than that!" Wynne says angrily. "I'm disappointed in you, Marian. You were a good student, but that means very little in the real world if you're not willing to – "

"You're right," Marian says, not caring in the least that she's interrupting. "It was unforgivably foolish of me." She's counting – Has it really been five weeks since Ostagar? Had she meditated at _all_ after Duncan recruited her? She remembers it crossing her mind, but it was always at the worst of possible times, when she absolutely had to do something else, and... well, she's had a lot on her mind, from the fate of the world to intimate personal concerns. 

She's been reckless, and foolish, and criminally stupid, and everything in between. She can't be so careless. That's the beginning and the end of it. If there hadn't been time, she should have _made_ time. And there must have been time, somewhere, if she's had time to flirt with Alistair and play at knife-fighting and – 

"You're an adult, in every way that matters." Wynne sounds placated by Marian's honest and prompt acknowledgement of her wrongdoing. It's not why Marian did it, but it's nice nevertheless. She's kicking herself quite enough over this already. She truly doesn't need the lecture.

"I have responsibilities," Marian says, numb. She's not really looking at Wynne; her eyes have drifted as she thinks. She's talking to herself, too. Just because she hadn't chosen to take on the desperate quest that they're on doesn't mean that she can neglect the day to day responsibilities that are hers simply because of what she is. And she has. Oh, she has. Now that she looks, she can see it. Her mind is a morass of emotions and memories and feelings that she's papered over and tried to forget. She thought she'd been doing so well lately; the grief of her father's death hasn't been quite at the top of her mind, coloring every waking thought. But she's been lying to herself. She's been pushing things aside so she doesn't have to think about them.

Marian takes a deep breath. She can fix this. Nothing has yet happened that she can't make right. "May I join you in your meditations tonight?"

Wynne gives her an approving smile and agrees. "Just before bed," she tells Marian, and they head back to Genitivi. He's sleeping, though how he can manage it in this cold and hard place she can't imagine, and that leaves Marian nothing to do except think.

Well, perhaps not, she thinks as she notices that Sten is likewise unoccupied. She drops down next to him and winces at the cold on her privates. 

"Warden," he greets her. She can't tell if he's colder toward her than before, or whether it's in her mind. 

Marian plunges straight into the quagmire. "I'm not sure of you," she says, watching his face intently. She therefore notices the tiny expressions he can't control, narrowing eyes, the wrinkles in his forehead creasing deeper in confusion. "I don't..." She gives up. "I don't understand you," she says with a sigh.

"Then that is your failing," he says, losing interest in her entirely, turning back to his sword. 

"I know." That brings his head back up. He stares at her. "I _know_ ," she repeats, willing him to understand. "I have failings. I'm only human."

Sten snorts in agreement, and after a moment, Marian laughs, too. 

"But I'm working on it," she says. It's a promise. She hopes he takes it that way. 

There's silence for a while, and Marian takes a rare opportunity to sit with someone who doesn't feel the need to talk to her so she can just watch the people she's collected just living their lives. She likes most of them, but Maker, they do go on sometimes.

Zevran and Leliana are going through a pile of daggers, debating their relative merits. Marian's not sure where they came from, only that their previous owners are probably dead; Zevran is enjoying himself far too much for anything else to be the case. Leliana isn't fond of his flirting, Marian knows, but she's allowed herself to be drawn to the pile of daggers by Zevran making sarcastic little comments about each one. Before long, they've started bickering about the hilt on this one, or the quality of the metal on that one, or whether the thin, wicked stiletto is suited to the fighting style that Zevran prefers. Marian, who has never needed to think about choosing a weapon before, listens with interest until they start to drift off the subject and onto Zevran's favorite topic: innuendo. Marian's not interested, nor worried for Leliana; she can keep up and more if she wants to. 

Morrigan stands with her hands on her hips, surveying the crowded hallway with disgust. She tends to set her tent apart from the rest when they camp at night. This must be her worst nightmare. But it's not wise to stray too far from the rest of the pack in these circumstances, and Morrigan must know that, too. Marian draws her knees up to her chest and loops her arms around her legs, watching with interest to see what she'll do. Eventually Morrigan drops her bedroll against the wall, still in its tight roll, and strides off to the furthest reach of the firelight, where she settles down on crossed legs and takes out a book. From here, it's hard to see, but Marian thinks it's Flemeth's grimoire. She keeps meaning to ask Morrigan what else is in it, but it's slipped her mind; now's not the time, she decides.

Cú pads over and gently plants his gigantic arse on her feet, panting at Sten like _he's_ the one with the mabari crunch hidden in his bag. Then he and Sten have... Marian doesn't even know how to describe it. They growl and bark and roar at each other until something breaks in the air – a kind of tension Marian doesn't understand – and Cú sits back on his heels, panting at Sten, his tongue lolling. 

"A true warrior," Sten says approvingly. 

Well, at least he respects her _dog_. 

"So what happens now?" Marian asks him, and when he turns on her with the kind of confused look she's beginning to associate with him, she keeps going. "You don't agree with this little detour, never mind that I don't either – what now? Are you going home when we get back to Ferelden?"

She's more anxious for the answer than she realized. She's grown attached to him, despite his standoffish nature, and she hopes to learn more about him in days to come.

"You weren't lying earlier," is his blunt reply. "You don't understand me." Sten looks at her, that's all, but it makes her feel small and foolish like she's done something wrong and needs to apologize. "I swore to follow you into battle until I found my atonement." 

He goes back to his gear like there's nothing more to be said. Perhaps he's right. Marian talks too much anyway. Maybe she should try silence for a change.

She lasts for all of ten minutes before she has to get up, to move around and find something to do. Wynne snags her sleeve as she passes and she helps change the poultices on Genitivi's leg. It uses up the last of their prepared potions. Marian hadn't thought to bring her distillation equipment and has to go borrow Morrigan's instead. 

When she returns, Genitivi's woken up. He looks up when she approaches, her hands full of elfroot and heavy equipment. "My apologies," he says, and manages a grin. "I'd get up, but..."

Marian smiles at him. "I think Wynne might hurt you if you tried."

"Indeed," Genitivi says. "I don't believe I caught your name."

Marian's still nervy, and she once talked their way out of trouble when Senior Enchanter Torrin caught Jowan, Lissette, and her out of bounds in the middle of the night. She can talk to anyone, so she can do this. Right?

She puts down her load and sits cross-legged next to him. "I'm Marian Amell, ser," she says, drawing what composure she can find around herself. 

"None of that." Genitivi sighs, shifting a little. "I'm just a brother of the Chantry. Call me Genitivi."

She can't possibly do that, but she can't say no, either. Marian instantly decides to avoid his name altogether. "A pleasure to meet you," she says, smiling. "At least, as much as it can be under the circumstances." 

"Indeed," Genitivi says, dry as dust. "You don't know how glad I was to see someone who isn't from this village."

"You don't know how glad I was to see you!" Marian says at once. "I was sure you were dead, or you'd moved on somewhere else, and I was going to have to hunt you all over Ferelden."

"You're here for _me_?" Genitivi asks. He sounds confused, and Marian can't blame him – has she really neglected to tell him why she's here? Apparently so. 

"Arl Eamon is sick with a magical illness that has no cure," Marian says. She stacks elfroot leaves in the mortar and starts to grind them down into paste. "Arlessa Isolde sent many people looking for you."

Genitivi sighs. "I know," he says. "Eirik told me about the Redcliffe knights. Some were ambushed, some killed, a few brought back to Haven to be questioned by the villagers. He was so self-righteous about it, so smug. He seemed _pleased_ that he had tortured and murdered these men."

The anger rises again, stronger and sweeter and oh so tempting, but instead she pounds it out with the pestle, matching the short, sharp blows to the beat of her heart. "I've fought with knights of Redcliffe," Marian says when she has her temper under control. "They're good men. They didn't deserve that. _No one_ deserves that."

She'd been wrong about Eirik. How could she have misread him so badly?

"No," Genitivi agrees sadly. "There's nothing we can do but pray those men have found peace."

Marian isn't really interested in the Maker right now, but it seems rude and possibly blasphemous to say what she's thinking. She switches from striking to grinding, carefully watching the paste that starts to form. 

Genitivi watches her work for a while before asking, "Is that for me?"

"Indirectly, I suppose," Marian says, looking up with a slight smile. "We were running short in any case, and Wynne used the last of the poultices on your leg. You'll need more on the way down the mountain."

Genitivi struggles up onto his elbows, alarm written all over his face. "You're not planning on leaving already, are you?"

"Of course," Marian says, frowning. "Brother Genitivi, you're badly hurt. And the arlessa wants to speak to you, and I have important business of my own to attend to – "

"But I tell you that I have found the final resting place of Andraste Herself," Genitivi says. His eyes are huge and insistent, fever-bright with reflected firelight. "You need only enter the Temple to see if the legend is true. Why not see for yourself?"


	33. The Temple

Marian glances down the long hallway, past the fire and her friends, to the door at the end. "You _found_ it?" she asks him, incredulous. 

It's not that she doubts him, exactly... Well, it's exactly like that, actually. She doesn't believe the thing ever existed in the first place, or if it did, it's been lost to time and the indifference of a whole continent of peoples who are more interested in killing each other than preserving history. 

But Brother Genitivi _believes_ , and believes so fervently that he lights up the air around him like a brand. She can see it on his face, in his eyes, in the way he can't stop himself from looking down the hall, like all his dreams are just out of his reach. 

She's starting to feel cruel for setting camp directly next to the door, where he can't see anything of what lays beyond their fire. 

"Through pure luck, if I'm being honest," he says, remembered surprise and humor in his voice. "I had always assumed that the temple that housed the Urn would be lost to time and abandoned. Completely by accident, I came across a document unrelated to anything I was working on that mentioned a village called Haven. I'd been studying for years, you see, and I'd narrowed down the temple's location to this range of mountains. It became clear to me that the village would be near the temple."

"But how did you know _that_?" Marian asks, her brow furrowing. 

"I charted Havard's journey so many times, and so many ways, that I started to see it in my sleep," Genitivi says. He starts to push himself into a sitting position and winces. " _Curse_ these ribs!" he swears explosively. 

"You're going to get us both in trouble," Marian warns him, but she helps him sit up against the wall anyway, sacrificing her pack of soft things to support his back. 

"Ah, that's better," he says, settling against the wall with a sigh. "Thank you, young lady. Now, where was I?"

"Harvard's journey," Marian says absently, setting down her mortar. Does she have any distillation agent left? Does she have what she needs to make more? She rifles through her bag of potion ingredients and thanks anyone who happens to be listening when her hand closes on the glass jar that holds what she needs.

"Yes," Genitivi says, settling in against the wall. "I charted his path many times, over the Imperial Highways or through uninhabited territories, but every time, it led me here, to the Frostbacks. Our own stories tell us the same; there's even a formation just to the north that we call Havard's Steps. And if one entertains the notion that those stories must have been based on something true, then they form a natural starting place for the search."

It's not logic, not exactly. Nor is it sense. On the other hand, Marian has to admit that it's quite a lot of circumstantial evidence to disregard. "And so you were looking for a village in this area?" she asks.

Genitivi nods. "According to our legends, Havard met quite a few of the other disciples on his journey home. He led them somewhere, and they would have needed a place to live." He smiles with gentle, wry humor. "I was actually looking for an abandoned place. When I read that there were people in this village, it was a shock to me, let me tell you."

"What made them capture you?" Marian asks curiously.

"I mentioned my search for the Urn when I got here. That was probably it." He shrugs. "After that, it was never mentioned again."

They hadn't tried to capture Marian and her friends, though; no, they'd proceeded straight to attempted murder. Maybe she just has that effect on people. 

"But what is going on here? They _killed_ those poor knights just because they were asking questions," Marian says. "Eirik said... " She pauses, trying to remember his exact words. "He spoke of a woman," she says eventually. "The Risen Lady. And she was sacred." 

"They call themselves the Disciples of Andraste," Genitivi says, snorting a little in scorn. "They are very, _very_ devoted. One could say fanatically so." 

"The Disciples of _Andraste_?" Marian repeats. 

"They must be here to protect the Urn... " Genitivi goes on, lost in thought. Either he's missed her comment or ignored it. "But they speak of Andraste as though... as though She were still alive."

"That's impossible," Marian says, trying to dismiss the sense of unease that's growing in her stomach. "Isn't it?"

Genitivi meets her eyes. He's not sure, she realizes, and the idea of it sends a shock through her. "I'm old enough to know that anything is possible, child," he says, but it's hesitant, unsure of his ground. He's not dismissed the idea out of hand, which would be her inclination – does that mean there might be something to it? 

Surely not.

Right?

They speak of other things after that. It takes very little prodding to get Genitivi to tell stories from his journeys while she finishes the poultices, and Marian listens, fascinated, as he brings the necropolises of Nevarra to life, tall and brooding and gruesome with mummified corpses. He's been everywhere from the wet swamplands of Rivain, where the peoples there follow their seers and the Qun in equal parts, to the harsh, bleak steppes of the Anderfels, whose people have dedicated themselves so fervently to the worship of Andraste and the Maker that they carved her likeness into the Merdaine for her continued glory, and everywhere in between.

As he speaks, first Leliana comes, drawn by the tales Genitivi spins of distant lands and the strange customs of those who live there, and then Alistair sits down opposite them and gives every appearance of listening. He's watching Marian, though, watching her with a funny little smile on his face that makes her flush and look away. 

It's time for her to go meditate with Wynne, in any case, but as she gets up, she casts a regretful glance back at her spot between Genitivi and Leliana. 

When she passes Alistair, she puts her hand on his shoulder, ostensibly to keep her balance as she bends her steps around him, but she knows that she just wants to touch him, the way she does all the time. When Marian looks down at him, his mouth is curved in a sly little smile that says he knows it, too. 

She tucks that smile away in her heart to keep and joins Wynne, sitting cross-legged on the ground. She doesn't need any instructions, not after ten years of the Circle, and she submerges herself in her mind with ease.

Her mental landscape has always been a blaze of wildfire, with roaring flames and simmering embers, and it alarmed her teachers until they realized just how strong her affinity for the elements was. Her memories are here, all of them, even the very first ones, far off in the distance. 

She doesn't fear the fire. It's hers, after all. 

Scattered here and there are mounds of dirt, but they're covering something, something that flickers with red heat. Those are the things she's buried, and the things she needs to sort through.

The first barrow, the nearest and the largest, is only a few steps away. Marian kneels and cracks it open with a sharp blow – 

_Her father's face, his hands around her throat, the missing chair in her mother's kitchen. She will never see him again and he will never know what happened to her, she will never know if he would be proud of her or what he might teach her. My magic serves what is best in me, he says, crouching in front of her, his face very serious. Do you understand what that means?_

Marian takes her hand from the fire, suddenly feeling very old and very tired. She'd known, of course; her cursory examination earlier had told her what lies here. But the grief is stronger than she thought.

There are old adages that say only time can heal grief, and in the meanwhile she can only bear the weight as well as she can. She can survive this. She _can_.

Marian lays out on her bedroll and folds her hands over her stomach, staring at the ceiling. She'll sleep eventually, and in the meantime, she occupies herself with reciting potion ingredients and catalysts. She's up to _felandaris_ before something nudges her foot. 

She pushes herself up onto her elbow to look down her body. She'd deliberately laid out her things between the rest of camp and the hallway, because Cú was bound to sleep on her feet and he's their best alarm. But Alistair is laying out his bedroll even beyond hers, between her and the corridor. 

"What are you doing?" she hisses.

The look he gives her tells her quite clearly that she's asked a stupid question. "Sleeping," he says. "What are _you_ doing?"

It would be ridiculous to make a fuss when he's already laid out his bedpad, but still she thinks about it before reluctantly giving up and laying back down. "Kicking you in the head when you least expect it," she says under her breath.

"Sleep well," is his cheerful response as he lays down.

 _Git_ , she grumbles to herself, but she surprises herself by dropping off immediately into deep, restful sleep.

She wakes before the rest, and instead of getting up, she stares at the ceiling and thinks hard. They have to make a decision today. Genitivi should be strong enough to leave for Redcliffe today. They can turn around and march right back down that path and they probably should.

But somehow in the last twenty-four hours, between arriving at Haven and now, she'd lost a bit of her certainty that Andraste's Urn is a fantasy. These people, this place... they're such a mystery. Marian has a million questions, which is much as usual, but what if the answer to every one of them is the Urn? And after all, they're _here_. What's the harm in taking an hour to check what lays beyond the door at the end of the hall? Of course, with their luck, the whole cult will be waiting for them.

Marian chews on her lip, deliberating. Cú is draped over her legs, snoring like his life depends on it, but she can hear someone stirring behind her. She needs to make up her mind, and quickly.

She can't make their choices for them, Marian decides in the end. It'll be up to each of them if they want to come with her. Someone will have to keep the entrance clear, and she's hopeful that she can persuade Genitivi to stay here in the camp while they check out what's down the other end. Wynne will undoubtedly elect to stay with him, if only to make sure he doesn't break the other leg. Cú will come with her, of course, and Alistair, who seems as attached to her as... well, as she is to him. Leliana is so devout that she won't pass up this chance to see the Lady's final resting place. That's as far as she can predict.

She speaks to each of them in turn over the morning meal, and the only surprise is that Morrigan wishes to come with her. Marian suspects that Morrigan is simply so bored that even something as foolish and ridiculous as an ancient Andrastian temple sounds more interesting than sitting around and waiting for interminable hours.

The only sticking point is Brother Genitivi. He won't stay where it's relatively safe, and Marian doesn't have the heart to deny him when he says, nearly begging, "This has been my life's work! To have come this far only to turn back... I couldn't bear it. _Please_."

Marian sighs heavily. "You will stay far, far behind us," she informs him. "If we tell you to go back, you will, no questions asked."

He agrees with relief and with humor. He's standing better, Marian notes with a critical eye; maybe he wasn't as badly hurt as Wynne thought.

The same key opens the door at the end of the hall, and they walk out into a huge, long hall, unearthly with mist. It's frozen over with the kind of clear ice that reflects ambient light into a haze that illuminates the room with a strange glow. The ceiling arches far above; whoever had built this place had carved it straight out of the mountain, and had used every inch of the room provided. 

"Maker's breath, look at it all," Alistair says, sounding genuinely impressed. He's looking at the ceiling, too. "Think that goes all the way up?"

"Who knows?" Marian says, looking up at the majesty of it all. "But I'd love to find out."

"What I would give to have seen this hall in all its splendor, as it was meant to be..." Genitivi says behind her. She turns to find him taking in everything, with the kind of wide-eyed interest that she so empathizes with. "Still, sweep away the ice and the snow, and traces of beauty remain."

"They must have spent _years_ building it all," Marian says, looking at everything, the huge expanse of hall, the columns, the doorways on either side that lead further into the mountain. She has no idea how long it would have taken, but the sheer scale of it – she can't imagine anything less than lifetimes spent in building this homage.

The long walls are half-hidden behind frost and piled snow, but Marian drifts closer, drawn to the intriguing hint of carvings laid into the wall. She brushes snow away to reveal an ancient, worn relief sculpture of ranked Tevinter soldiers, so many of them that the wall seems filled with their tiny figures. Their opponents are likewise hidden under snow, and she's reaching out to brush it away too before she pauses, her hand in mid-air.

This isn't why she's here. Blast it.

She lets her hand drop and turns back to the others, but she's not the only one distracted. "These carvings were created just after Andraste's death," Genitivi says, a muted thread of excitement in his voice. "They may reveal things about Her life that we do not yet know."

"But we can't stay, much as we might wish to," Marian reminds him.

Genitivi looks around once more, his eyes lingering on each statue, each sculpture, the scenes worked into each column, and shakes his head. "It will take weeks just to make a start," he says, almost to himself. Then he turns to her. "Leave me here," he says. "I need more time to study these things."

Marian regards him for a moment, unsure, but then she looks at Wynne, who nods at her reassuringly. Wynne will stay with him. Sten and Zevran are just down the hall, keeping their backs free. He'll be safe enough.

"All right," Marian agrees. "Be careful." 

They leave him there, in Wynne's company, and when Marian glances back at him over her shoulder he's already thousands of years away, studying the relief sculpture like it'll get away if he doesn't. She should have known he'd be impatient to get started, she thinks with a smile.

"Oh!" she says aloud as a thought strikes her. She brushes away Leliana's concern and jogs back to Genitivi, digging in her pack. "Here," she says, holding out Genitivi's research notebook. "We found this in Denerim. You're probably going to want it."

Pleasure breaks over his face, but as he takes the book, his brows come down in confusion. "Where did you find this?"

"At your house, in Denerim," Marian says, a little puzzled. _Where else?_ But that reminds her – and how horrible of her to forget. "I should probably tell you about Weylon."

And she does, sparing him nothing. Genitivi sags against the wall for support, suddenly looking very old indeed. "Ah, poor Weylon..." He looks down at the little notebook in his hands, smoothing his hand over the cover, and sighs. "I should never have dragged you into this. Maker take you into His hands, my boy."

Grief is an old friend. So is guilt. Marian knows them well. There's nothing she can say or do to help this hurt, so she turns to leave him to his thoughts and his privacy, but his hand grips her shoulder before she can leave.

When she turns, Genitivi's holding the notebook out to her. "Take this," he says. "Please. It may help you later."

Marian reaches out for it, but – it's his life's work, he'd said. She closes her fingers. "Something might happen to it," she says uncertainly. "Or we might not come back. I can't take that from you."

"The Temple was designed to protect the Urn from those who would steal it, or do harm to it." Genitivi shakes his head, takes her hand and puts the notebook in it, closing her hand around it. "You're going to need this."

And then he turns away. It's clear he won't take no for an answer. All she can do, therefore, is to keep it safe for him.

She turns away to her friends, who wait for her with varying degrees of impatience, and they walk into the Temple.

\---

They check each side passage as they proceed up the hall, and every time they do there are villagers who attack them on sight. There's no reasoning with them, and even when they're subdued they fight like madmen to get back up, to rejoin the fray. 

They leave a trail of bodies in their wake. It's an unfortunate metaphor for their lives recently.

There are many books and scrolls lying around, and Marian does her best to at least glance over all of them, not because she's perishing of curiosity – though of course she _is_ , as always – but for some sign of what's going on here. Many of these books are copies of older manuscripts, so old that they'd probably rotted right out of their bindings while they were being copied. 

But there's no convenient journal that says _We who sacrifice all perfectly innocent travelers will live forever in Her name_. The books are just as silent on that front as the villagers are.

One of the side passages holds a giant, thick four-legged creature with massive, wickedly sharp horns and a nasty temperament. It bowls her over, knocking her off her feet, before she catches it with a stunning spell and scrambles away as Leliana uses it for a pincushion. 

"What in the Maker's name is _that_?" she gasps.

No one seems to know. Even Morrigan just shrugs. 

There are traps back here, and other mages, too; their pace slows to a crawl, clearing one room after another filled with people who want nothing more than to kill them. As they penetrate deeper into the mountain, further into the Temple, the villagers attack with twisted wraiths, things Marian's only seen before at the demon invasion of the Circle. What _is_ this place?

There's so much here that feels like it's just out of her understanding. There's a statue of Maferath in one place, and Hessarian in another; at least those she recognizes. But what is the thing with three fish heads and a rodent body? What is the statue of the thing with a flat head and wings portraying? 

It's almost a relief when they find an opening into a rough cave. The stone beneath their feet is worn smooth in a path that's easy to follow. How many people must this have taken, over how many years? The caves open up after the first small tunnel. It's uncomfortable here in a way that hadn't bothered her in the temple; the rock over her head preoccupies an increasingly larger portion of her mind as they go deeper into the mountain. If that weight should suddenly take it into its head to fall – 

Marian shivers, and tries not to touch anything. 

There are dragonlings in this cave, far more than the lone few in the Circle. The villagers fight alongside them, like they've got common cause; can dragonlings be trained, like dogs? Perhaps if they're raised from the egg, but if that's so, where are they getting dragon eggs from?

The dragonlings get bigger, the villagers come in ever-increasing numbers, and Marian is desperately afraid that they're lost. But for all that, there's a growing wonder in her mind. Could the Urn be real? This Temple is old and huge and gorgeous, but it's also a secret. It's not raised to Andraste's glory, because if it were, it would be a public spectacle like the Grand Cathedral in Val Royeaux. This is a treasure box, complete with traps and defenders. 

She doesn't know what to think. 

They step into a cave bigger than the rest, where a huge, intimidating man demands that they stop. She's not inclined to listen, but finally there's someone who has something to say to her. She can work with that.

But he's hostile, demanding answers from _her_ like this place isn't completely insane, and the bits of information he lets slip are...

They think Andraste was reincarnated as a dragon.

Marian lets go of any hope she has that they're going to find anything approaching sense or rationality here. She can accept that there might be a dragon somewhere up ahead; after all, the dragonlings had to come from somewhere. But the villagers have clearly spent too long breathing thin mountain air if this is the idea to which they've dedicated their lives.

Kolgrim and his men attack when she questions their beliefs – quite mildly, in fact, especially for her – and this is the closest fight by far. Kolgrim is monstrously enraged, berserk, and it's all Cú and Alistair can do just to hold him off. Morrigan shifts into a grossly huge, twisted spider form, but Leliana and Marian are cut off from the rest and when it's finally done, they're all bleeding and exhausted. Marian calls for a rest while she musters the strength to heal her friends, and then they go out of the cave into a little passage that leads up, and out, and into the cool midday sun.


	34. The Gauntlet

They emerge from the depths of the mountain onto a plateau, stonework ruins scattered here and there. On one side of the path is a gazebo, with half of the walls fallen down, and on the other a hot springs. It smells like sulphur. Marian wrinkles her nose and shields her eyes from the sun, checking for cultists, but as far as she can tell, they're alone. 

"There appears to be another entrance on the far side," Morrigan says.

Marian squints a bit, but she can't see that far. She'll take Morrigan's word for it, though. "Then let's go."

There's rubble blocking the path in places and even where it's passable, the ground is treacherous, slowing their pace to a maddening, winding crawl. 

Something makes Marian look up. At first she takes it for a bird, but no bird is that fast. It wings toward them with terrible speed, growing larger and larger in her vision at an incredible pace. Her breath catches in her throat.

_Dragon_. 

She's never seen one before, not even pictures, but there's no mistaking it. It screams and turns on a dime, its tail whipping around behind it. Her heart leaps in her chest. It's so big, it's _magnificent_ , long and sleek and free. She stares at it, awestruck, until Alistair reaches out and yanks her behind the cover of a huge bit of rubble.

"What are you _doing_?" he hisses, like he's afraid it'll hear.

Marian laughs, wild and exultant. She flings herself at him. "Did you see that?" 

For a minute Alistair looks like he's about to shake her, but instead he sighs, an unwilling smile tugging at his mouth. He slides his arm around her waist, tentatively, like he's not sure he's allowed. 

She supposes she was being foolish – a high dragon is fiercely territorial. If it'd seen her, it would have attacked on sight. But something in it called to a part of her, something solemn and secret and crackling with possibility, and she couldn't resist. She closes her eyes, watching the dragon wing across the back of her eyelids, and sighs. "Beautiful," she murmurs.

"You're a crazy person," Alistair says. At least he sounds amused now.

Marian opens her eyes to grin at him, wide and bright. "You're the one who put me in charge, you know," she says, and ducks out of cover. Alistair yelps, reaching out to draw her back, but she neatly dodges his hand and races down the path. She weaves around the rubble until she reaches a clear spot where she can see the entire mountaintop.

The dragon has come to rest on a shelf high above the plateau she's standing in, and even as she watches, it lays down and rests its head on the curve of its legs, like Cú when he's sleepy. A small, suicidal part of her mind is already trying to find a way up to its ledge. 

_No_ , she tells herself firmly. _Bad Marian_. 

Oh, but if she could – ! She hasn't used the shapeshifting techniques Morrigan showed her hardly at all. She still only has the robin form. Could it be possible to keep a dragon's soul in her mind? To become that form whenever she likes?

It's impossible to get that close, of course. It would eat her whole. 

If only she could logic her desires away that easily.

The dragon hasn't shown any signs of noticing her yet. Perhaps it's used to people passing back and forth beneath it. They might be able to sneak past without rousing it if they keep to the edges of the path and skirt the ledge where it rests. 

Maker! No one will ever believe this story; _she_ wouldn't believe it if she weren't here. 

Marian turns and waves the rest of them down the path to join her. She feasts her eyes on the dragon while she waits. When will she ever have the chance to see a dragon again? 

Morrigan pauses next to her, staring up at the sleeping dragon. "Be cautious," she says, narrowing her eyes. "A dragon such as this is better to avoid than engage." 

"I know," Marian says regretfully. "If we're quick and quiet, we should get by."

It goes according to plan, though Marian has to hold Cú by the collar the entire way to keep his growling down. Nothing else jumps out at them, and they make it to the other door unscathed.

There's lava lining the path on this end. There must be more, deep in the mountain. That's presumably where the heat source for the hot springs comes from, and perhaps why the dragon chose to settle here. There can't be many hot spots in these mountains. Why the villagers chose to believe that it's Andraste she'll never understand. Perhaps they've all gone mad, but she hates chalking things up to disordered thinking – it feels like giving up.

The door opens easily, and it's cooler and dark inside. Marian pauses for a moment to let her eyesight return, but Morrigan strides on without her, and Leliana is drifting after her, obviously intrigued and just as obviously torn about it. Marian laughs and waves them on. 

A _dragon_! This is the best, most maddening day.

As her eyes clear, she notices Alistair watching her with amusement. "What?" she says.

"I was half afraid you were going to try to bring it home with us," he says, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest. "You have a habit of collecting strays."

Cú grumbles, drawing it out until he ends on a low whine to make clear how personally he's hurt. "Now look what you've done," Marian says, raising her eyebrow. "People who upset my dog get punished, you know."

"You should see the slobber in my pack. I think I've already been punished," Alistair says with a grin. 

Leliana is calling them now, her voice growing louder, and on impulse Marian lifts herself onto her toes and kisses Alistair's cheek. "Thanks for saving me from the dragon," she says into his ear. "My hero."

She turns to head into the temple, but not before she notices Alistair's ears burning red. She smiles to herself.

It's warmer inside, and Marian's already sweating. She spares a thought for the idea of fighting in furs in this warmth and winces. Maybe she'll have better luck talking to the villagers here; even better if there aren't any, but their luck's not that good. She turns the corner into a room even more richly carved and decorated than the great hall. Leliana is walking down the aisle toward her, but she stops when Marian appears and gestures behind her, to Morrigan, and the man she speaks to.

Morrigan looks frustrated, too, her shoulders tense and her head back. Marian can just imagine the hauteur with which Morrigan is glaring at the man. She'd better interrupt before Morrigan turns him into a toad.

As she draws closer, the rest of her friends following in her wake like so much flotsam and jetsam, he turns to her and bows his head. Whatever Morrigan said to him hasn't disturbed him, then. In fact, he's almost preternaturally calm. His huge, winged helmet and dark beard obscure most of his face, but his eyes are serene, watching her with a sedate kind of curiosity. "I bid you welcome, pilgrims."

His appearance is nothing out of the ordinary, but his voice – it carries unearthly tones in its harmony, like something is speaking through him. If that's so, he's at peace with it; his manner carries nothing of struggle, or desperation, or rage, all things that Connor hadn't been able to disguise. 

He's not attacking. That alone would mark him different. 

"Who _are_ you?" Marian asks, totally baffled. "You're not one of them."

"I am the Guardian, the protector of the Urn of Sacred Ashes." He studies her. For some reason, Marian has the uneasy feeling that he's seeing straight into her soul, seeing all her secrets and hidden places. "I have waited years for this."

Wait. He's not seriously... "Are you saying it's _real_?" Marian demands. "The Urn of Sacred Ashes, Andraste's ashes, all of it – it's _here_?"

"Part of you believed, or you would not have come," the Guardian says, regarding her steadily. 

Marian opens her mouth to disagree, but if she's being honest, she can't. He's right. If she truly believed there had been no chance of finding anything up here, she would have fetched Genitivi and left, no matter what he had to say. She would have had no compunctions about putting him over Sten's shoulder like a sack of flour. 

But how did he know that? Are her thoughts written all over her face? 

She'll ask Leliana later.

If the Urn is here... If the Urn is here and truly contains the ashes of Andraste, and if the ashes truly have the healing power that legend ascribes to them, then Eamon might be saved. 

That's a lot of ifs. Even so, it's worth the effort. 

Marian glances at the door behind him. That must be the way in, though in to where she couldn't possibly say. She somehow doubts that the Guardian would let her slip around him to open the door, though. It's possible that they need to do something to persuade him to move aside, though she hopes it won't come down to more fighting. She's tired of killing. She snorts at herself; she's grown vain if she thinks that they'll automatically win this fight. 

"What now?" Marian asks, searching the Guardian's face for something, some trace of the emotion that must lie beyond that calm exterior. There must be something there that marks him a man, that will set her mind at ease about his intentions.

"It has been my duty, my life, to protect the Urn and prepare the way for the faithful who come to revere Andraste," he tells her. "For years beyond counting have I been here, and shall I remain until my task is done and the Imperium has crumbled into the sea." 

Marian is becoming accustomed to the heavy burden of duty that being a Grey Warden demands of her, but something about that is unbearably sad to her. "And what happens to you then?" she asks, but she's not really sure she wants to know the answer.

"I do not know," the Guardian says impassively. "I do not question."

As a philosophical statement, it's not really suited to someone of Marian's temperament. "I have a few," Marian says, uncertain of the limits of his patience, but he gestures for her to go ahead. 

He tells her that the villagers are descendants of the people who followed Havard to these mountains. They spent centuries here, living their lives, protecting the Temple, until one of Kolgrim's ancestors fancied himself a new prophet. He spread the word of Andraste's rebirth through the village; those who did not convert were quickly killed.

The Guardian seems to think that he's one of Andraste's Disciples, that he's been here for all these centuries watching the world go by. He thinks he knew Andraste, speaks of her with careful, distant reverence that's almost convincing. Nevertheless, Marian memorizes every word of it – for surely Genitivi will want to hear everything, every single detail, whether Marian believes it or not. 

But if the man's cracked, then the Urn is probably still a just a legend. _Damn_.

Still, it hurts no one to check. "May we pass, then?" Marian asks.

The Guardian examines her once again. "You have come to honor Andraste, and you shall, if you prove yourself worthy," he says.

"And how may we do that?"

"The Gauntlet will decide your worthiness. If you are found worthy, you will see the Urn and be allowed to take a small pinch of the Ashes for yourself. If not... " He shrugs, the implication obvious. His calm, still expression seems faintly ominous now, striking a false note in the overall impression of calm serenity he exudes. 

Marian takes a deep breath. She's a little scared, as she always is when walking into the unknown. Her luck has been poor lately, but something – perhaps a foolishly optimistic streak – keeps her trying over and over again. "Very well," she says. She glances back at her friends; Leliana smiles, Alistair nods, and Morrigan scowls, each according to their nature. Cú has taken up his accustomed post at her side. She turns back to the Guardian and nods. "We're ready."

"Before you go, there is something I must ask." He looks at her again, that penetrating look that reads all of the secrets written on her heart, all of the fears and hopes and dreams she hides in her soul. She's being weighed, though for what she doesn't know. "I see that the path that led you here was not easy. There is suffering in your past – your suffering, and the suffering of others."

Too much suffering, most of it driven by the greed of men who should know better. Marian can claim her fair share of responsibility, though; her nightmares can attest to that.

"Jowan was discovered by the templars. You were helping him." There's an unaccustomed note of censure to the Guardian's voice now, something reflected in his eyes as he watches her. "Tell me, do you think you failed Jowan?"

"How do you know that?" Marian asks warily, cursing herself for the catch in her voice. 

"Your path is laid out before me and plain to see – in the lines of your face and the scars on your heart."

It's no answer at all. _Damn_ him. What right has he to her secrets? She has every intention of telling the Guardian where he can shove his questions, but then she looks at him again. He's not judging her anymore, if he ever truly was. He's really and truly interested in her answer. Something about the sincerity of his demeanor disarms her anger, and when it does, she's left with only the heartsick sea of guilt and anger and confusion and even love that she feels when she thinks about Jowan.

"Do you believe you failed Jowan?" The Guardian asks again, gentle, implacable.

"Of course I did!" Marian bursts out. She presses her hand to her face, taking a deep breath to control the stinging behind her eyes. She can _not_ start crying now. She'll never forgive herself if she does. "There must have been something I could have done," she says, almost to herself. "I should have noticed. I should have _seen_."

She knew that Jowan was weak, not in power but in personality. He had the kind of mind that looks for an escape route instead of a solution. She should have known he'd look for a shortcut. She could have done something, _made_ him listen – she's the only one who could have.

Her eyes are damp.

She drops her hand and glares at the Guardian. "Is that what you wanted to hear? That I regret everything?"

"Thank you," the Guardian says with calm, infuriating courtesy. "That is all I wished to know."

Marian is tempted to set Morrigan on him.

Alistair touches her shoulder, though she can hardly feel him through five layers of clothing and armor. She wishes suddenly that they were a million miles away, just the two of them, somewhere where she could catch his hand and take off his glove to feel his touch. Instead she turns her head to look over her shoulder, trapping his hand between shoulder and cheek. The edges of his fingerplates dig into her skin, but she doesn't care. She needs the comfort. "You are too hard on yourself," Alistair says quietly. "No one's perfect."

"I agree," Leliana says. "You could not have known what would happen. You did what you thought was best."

Morrigan snorts. "Is there any religion that does not thrive upon guilt like a glutton at his lunch? No? I thought not."

Explaining her emotions to Morrigan, of all people, sounds like a recipe for madness.

He has his price, Marian thinks, lifting her cheek. To her regret, Alistair's hand drops away when she frees him. Why hasn't he let them pass?

"And what of those that follow you?" The Guardian turns slowly, implacably, to Alistair. Oh, Marian has a bad feeling about this. "Alistair, knight and Warden... you wonder if things would have been different if you were with Duncan on the battlefield. You could have shielded him from the killing blow. You wonder, don't you, if you should have died, and not him?"

Marian bristles in Alistair's defense like an offended cat. "How _dare_ you – "

"Marian." Alistair touches her shoulder again, moving forward to stand with Marian instead of behind her. She subsides, though she's not happy about it. 

Alistair sighs. "I... yes. If Duncan had been saved, and not me, everything would be better. If I'd just had the chance, maybe... " He trails off, imagining some distant, perfect world where Duncan singlehandedly stops the Blight before it starts.

Marian can't bear the wistful regret on his face, or the idea that he wishes he'd died in Duncan's place. She goes up on her toes and whispers, "My life would be much poorer if I'd never met you."

He looks at her, startled out of his daydreams. It takes him a moment, but she can see the moment it clicks for him, when he smiles at her with that stupid, fond look in his eyes. She can hear Morrigan scoffing behind her, and Leliana's probably got hearts in her eyes, but it's worth it to see Alistair fully present, not in the past or wishing for things that can never be. 

"And you..." The Guardian says, looking at Leliana behind them. His voice has gone shockingly cold, nearly accusing Leliana – of what? Marian turns so that she can see them both, and Morrigan too. What does he have against Leliana? "Why do you say the Maker speaks to you, when all know that the Maker has left? He spoke only to Andraste. Do you believe yourself Her equal?"

Oh Maker. It required only this. Who is he to judge Leliana's faith? 

Baffled, increasingly angry, Leliana is clearly hurt by the accusation. "I never said that! I—"

"In Orlais, you were _someone_ ," the Guardian says, interrupting like she hadn't said a word. "In Lothering, you feared you would lose yourself, become a drab sister, and disappear. When your brothers and sisters of the cloister criticized you for what you professed, you were hurt, but you also reveled in it. It made you special. You enjoyed the attention, even if it was negative."

"You're saying I made it up, for... for the _attention_?" Leliana shakes her head, her face white with fury and righteous indignance. "I did not! I know what I believe!"

The Guardian examines her for a long moment while Marian holds her breath. She doesn't know what the consequences of offending him might be, but something tells her they're not good. Yet all he does is incline his head a fraction and turn to Morrigan in turn.

"And you, Morrigan," he says, the traces of emotion gone from his voice like they never were. "Flemeth's daughter. What – "

"Begone, spirit," Morrigan says, cutting him off with an angry wave. "I will not play your games." 

The Guardian doesn't seem upset, though; he only nods again, as if that was an acceptable response. "I will respect your wishes," he says. 

_I wish I'd known that was an option_ , Marian thinks, still angry about the invasion of her mind's privacy and that of her friends.

Marian thinks the whole affair might be done with, but then the Guardian turns to her mabari, treating him exactly the same as he had the humans. "And lastly, Cú who was also Linden," he says. "Your former companion died on the fields of Ostagar, and you were not at his side. Did you fail in the duty every mabari owes their companion?"

Cú whines a little, deep in his throat. The sound hurts her; she drops down on one knee and hugs Cú around the neck. "You didn't," she whispers to him. "You couldn't have. You're the best mabari anyone could ask for."

"Thank you," the Guardian says. He's still remote, calm and cold, but now that he's harrowed each of them he seems somehow compassionate. It's too little and too late, as far as she's concerned. He steps aside from the door. "The way is open. Good luck, and may you find what you seek."

Cú licks Marian's face before she gets up, her hand tight in his fur, and leads them through the door without a glance at the Guardian. 

The chamber beyond is again huge and ornamented with statues and carvings and floor details that overwhelm the eye. There's too much of it, though. It's all starting to blend into the background for her, and that's a shame, because it's all beautiful. 

There are ghosts here. Each represents a part of Andraste's life, from her mother, Brona, to Hessarian and Vasilia as her executioners. Each has a riddle that must be solved before they may pass; Marian is so grateful that Morrigan decided that she would come, because somewhere between the dragon's majesty and the Guardian who'd dragged her grief out of its hiding place, Marian isn't fully up to this task. Between the four of them, they answer most of the riddles correctly, and they pass through the next door in short order.

The doors to the next chamber are double doors, and Marian pulls one side open to allow them to pass through. It's dark in the next room, and she and Morrigan spark their small lights – 

The door swings shut behind her. Suddenly she's alone in this small, dark chamber, with only her tiny light to keep her company.

Marian spins and yanks on the handle with all her strength, but it's closed as stubbornly as if it were a wall only pretending to be a door. "Cú! Alistair!" She can't hear anything, even the echoes of her own shouting, like she's been yanked from the real world and muffled in cotton wool. She swears, slapping the door in frustration, and slowly turns back around. 

Jowan grins at her. "Had fun with the riddle game?"

Oh, she's not in the mood for more games. "You're not real," she says, taking down her staff. "You won't catch me that way, demon."

Jowan laughs. "I didn't think I'd fool you." His amusement fades as he watches her, weighing her up in the same way the Guardian had. She doesn't like it any better coming from this doppelgänger. If nothing else, it brings back memories she'd rather forget. "No, this isn't who you need, is it?"

Between one blink and the next, the specter in front of her turns into her father, just as she remembers him. Before she knows it, Marian finds herself with her back against the door. "Stay away from me," she orders, though the shakiness of her voice undermines what little authority she can muster. 

"I don't want to hurt you, darling girl," it says, and in fact takes a step backward, as though that will reassure her that it means no harm. "I'm only here to talk."

Marian laughs bitterly. "Sure, and I believe you. Demons are known for telling the truth, after all." 

"I am no demon, Marian," it says. "I don't really know what I am. I am your father – I'm Jowan – I'm you – all these things are true. But you need to hear this in your father's voice for it to have meaning."

She can't listen to it, no matter how much she wants to. It's hard, though. She remembers this, the way he'd sit her down and make her listen, whether it was to a lecture, a scolding, or her next lesson. It was always kind, always gentle, but he expected her attention and knew how to keep it. This isn't _fair_.

Oh, what's fair? None of this is _fair_. 

It sighs deeply, sounding pained. "Is there nothing I can say that will persuade you that I mean you no harm?"

In spite of everything, she feels guilty. She'd always hated disappointing her father, and even though this isn't he, some of the feeling remains. "You're not my father," Marian says slowly. "And I can't think of any reason you must look like him except to hurt me." 

Though _how_ he'd taken on her father's appearance will interest her for a long time – the shapeshifting Morrigan taught her is strictly reserved for animals, whose souls aren't of a complexity to tax the space in her mind reserved for such things. Demons must do it differently.

"It's only a message," he says, spreading his hands as though helpless. "You'll pass through unmolested, I swear."

Marian bites her cheek, thinking about it for a long time, but she can't stand here forever. She needs to get out of here, and she doesn't care which direction she goes. "Fine," she says shortly. "Give me your message."

Somehow he's there in front of her, without having taken a step. He takes her shoulders when she would have pressed herself backward as if she were trying to melt through the door. "Marian," he says, his dark eyes compassionate. "You carry a weight of guilt that will crush you if you don't let it go. Me, Jowan, Lissette, even the Wardens at Ostagar whom you never met – you think you could have saved us all if you'd done things differently, or been better, faster, stronger." He shakes his head. "You can't save everyone. You'll only get yourself killed if you try. Acknowledge your guilt and then let it pass. It's time, and past time." He lets her go then, and steps backward into the darkness. "I love you, Marian, and I'm proud of you," he says, and though he's just a voice now, she swears her father's smiling. "Don't forget."

The room lights up, candles flaring on each wall. There's no one there. She's alone. 

And since she's alone, she allows herself the tears.


	35. The Urn

Marian wipes away the tears with an angry hand. She needs to get out, and to find her friends, and then someone's going to _hurt_ for this.

Her mind is her own, thank the Maker; perhaps the thing wasn't a demon after all, but just another nasty trick of ancient magic. The idea that it had been telling the truth crosses her mind, but it's only a passing thought before she dismisses it with a sharp shake of her head. Her father is by the Maker's side, Maker willing, and Jowan is probably halfway to Tevinter by now.

The doors behind her are still sealed shut, so she crosses the tiny room to the opposite door, which opens easily. The next room is empty, too, and she swears as she strides to peer around the corner, which is likewise empty and bare, just as everything else seems to be here. She turns around just in time to see Leliana melt out of empty air in front of the door Marian had just come through, staring at the door in slightly anxious confusion.

"Leliana?" Marian asks incredulously, then kicks herself. If it _is_ Leliana, she would have turned around eventually, and if it isn't, she could have used the moment to think –

Leliana turns, her face brightening with relief. It's Leliana. Of course it is. All the temple's creatures have had that maddening air of serenity around them, something that's entirely absent from Leliana. "Marian!" She takes two long steps over to join Marian. "Where are – "

But before she can finish, Alistair appears before her eyes in the same way Leliana had, though his face is grim in a way that worries Marian. She must make the strangest face, because Leliana spins on her heel, her hand reaching for her bow until she sees that it's Alistair. That means that she's watching when Morrigan shows up behind Alistair, and Cú shortly after her.

There's a lot of uncertain glancing back and forth. She takes in Alistair's face, the way he won't look at her, the banked fury in Morrigan's eyes, Cú's hesitant, unhappy pacing. She holds out her hand and Cú comes to her, though not without a moment of hesitation that breaks her heart. They have all been cruelly used, and she can't even promise that it's over. She runs her hand over Cú's head, scratching lightly around his ears, and he sighs.

"Everyone all right?" Marian asks eventually, looking up.

The silence speaks more than words could have. "We should move on," Morrigan says after a moment, colder and more remote than she has been these last days. Whatever – whoever – she saw must have upset her.

Marian waits for them to come closer before she turns and leads them down the short hallway to the next room. She takes a breath before she pushes this door open.

Even as she watches, the luminescent glow that suffuses the temple coalesces into a haze of blue light, thicker at the edges, forming into a figure –

Forming into _her_ , every detail exact, right down to her clothes and the staff in her hand. She's an eerie ghost, transparent and lyrium-blue at the edge. Ghostly echoes of Leliana, Cú, Morrigan, and Alistair take their places next to the copy of Marian on the opposite side of the room. She stares at herself, written on the air in magical wirework, and she stares back.

Is that really how she appears? She's so cold, so cruel. Even Morrigan at her worst had a touch of sardonic humor that saved her from being an utter bitch. This stranger opposite her has no saving graces.

"That's _us_ ," Leliana says, shocked.

"An interesting effect," Morrigan says, her amber eyes narrowed. "See there, they await our move."

And it's true, they're just standing there, patiently waiting for the intruders to do something. Do they have no will of their own?

Marian takes a few careful steps into the middle of the room, but the copies wait, still as stone, until she reaches some invisible line in the sand. Then her duplicate lifts her staff. Quick as a snake, Marian brings hers up, but she knows she's already too late. 

Pain crawls down every nerve, every inch of skin, every hair on her body and burrows into her flesh like knives. Pain freezes her voice in her chest, steals her breath and her nerves and her sense of identity. All there is is pain, excruciating, unbearable.

And then the spell ends, and she breathes in great big gulps of air. Breathing still hurts, in fact, though it's a small pain compared to what came before; something's wrong with her ribs and every muscle is sore, twitching and ill-used. She's never been on that side of a crushing prison before. She devoutly hopes that she never will be again.

She looks up. Leliana is keeping the other Alistair at bay with a flock of arrows, though Marian is interested to see that some of them are being deflected off of his shield. Morrigan is holding off herself and the other Leliana, though she looks pale and her breathing is heavy. Alistair circles the other Marian, anger and reluctance warring on his face. Cú rips into his twin even as she watches, though he doesn't seem to like the taste of magic; it doesn't stop him from trying to rip out his own throat.

The pain is fading, but Marian thinks some of her ribs might be broken. She can still move, though, and so she does, placing one careful foot in front of another. She puts herself opposite Alistair, flanking her twin, and then waves him off. He frowns at Marian, obviously uncertain as to where she's going with this, but then she glances at Morrigan meaningfully and he understands at once.

He pivots on one foot and slams his shield into the false Morrigan's side, sending her skidding across the ground until she hits the wall. He goes after her and Marian turns away, to the other her.

They're exactly alike in every respect, as proven by the spell she'd led with. It's one of her favorites, and it's always the first thing in her arsenal. Where she's weakest is melee, but Marian doesn't dare pit her little knife against a mage without backup. If nothing else, Leliana would kill her.

There's something wrong with her duplicate's eyes, though. She looks... _wrong_ , sick, almost like she's enjoying this fight.

Marian draws magic into herself, sends it spinning through her body, and then she does the hardest thing of all – she waits, restraining the magic that crackles in her fingers. She just needs an opening. Anything will do.

Leliana told her once that it's all in the eyes. Most people can't help it. There's usually at least a flicker in the direction they're planning to move, or a bracing tension as they prepare for what they're going to do next. Does that apply to magical doppelgängers? Do they have human weaknesses?

She'll never be able to put into words what makes her certain that her opponent is about to attack. Her hands are moving before she can even think of what they need to do, casting a crushing prison just as the other Marian starts calling down frost. Her doppelgänger doesn't even see it coming.

While she's a little bit distracted, Marian draws her knife and slits her own throat. The echo of Marian fades away, leaving nothing behind but disquiet in her wake.

A well-timed frost spell is all that Cú needs to take care of his opponent, and after that, the fight is soon over. Morrigan is drawn and white, and though she snaps at Marian when she suggests a break, Marian insists.

"Did you see the cruelty on my... on her face? Is that really what I am?" There's something a little bit lost in Leliana's eyes.

"Hmph. No doubt this had something to do with 'facing the dark side of your soul' or some such rubbish." Morrigan rolls her eyes, giving it a good effort, but her words lack their usual bite.

Alistair is quiet.

If she were the leader they need now, she'd know just what to say, or to do. She'd have a comforting word for Leliana, or maybe something tangible like her own water skin for Morrigan. They need support... but so does Marian. She feels like she's drowning.

But she doesn't get the luxury of allowing herself the anger, the pain, the heartsick grief that threaten to wash her away. She has a duty. She has responsibilities. There's a fucking Blight on. That's more important. 

She'll have a quiet word with them later. 

Marian preoccupies herself with Genitivi's notebook for five more minutes, and afterward, when she allows herself to look up, Morrigan is looking steadier. Marian stands, brushing off her pants, and heads for the door that will take them further into the temple.

Her friends follow, as always, and it's not until she hears the first footsteps that she realizes how afraid she was that they wouldn't come. Marian swallows. She is really very fortunate in her friends. She needs to remember that more often.

\---

The next room is empty of more than just people. There's a giant hole in the floor, and this isn't the fault of time; the edges of the hole are crisp and clean, and they're surrounded by eight floor plates that recess when enough weight is applied. With the help of Genitivi's journal, it only takes a few minutes of experimentation before they realize the trick of the room, the way that they call the bridge into life. After that, the puzzle is soon solved. Morrigan finds one last plate on the other side that stabilizes the bridge so that they can all cross, and they're through and on to the next room with no one trying to kill them or take advantage of their tender, bleeding emotional wounds.

Marian would knock wood if she could do it without someone looking at her like she's gone strange.

The hallway that leads to the next room is longer than she expects, and it gives her too much time to think about what might be coming next. Most of the trials have been deeply personal in some way. Most have emphasized quickness of the mind rather than martial prowess.

Marian isn't feeling at all quick anymore. She almost hopes that what's coming up is another fight. At least that's easy – kill or be killed.

The door at the end of the hall is open, and she can see giant, pulsing sheets of fire in the next room. It's getting hotter as she goes, too. She wipes the sweat off her forehead with a grimace. They pass through the doorway and into another large room, but this one has a dais at the other end, with a majestic sweep of stairs leading up to...

 _Oh._ Maker. It's Andraste's Urn, right there, nearly close enough to touch.

If that's really the Urn... Then she's been wrong this whole time. While that's like a punch to the gut, she can get through that. The unpleasant realization that some of her assumptions were obviously incorrect is the harder thing to swallow.

All right, then. The thing exists. That doesn't mean it has any of the magical qualities ascribed to it by legend, but it does mean that she needs to do whatever it takes to get some of Andraste's ashes to take back to Redcliffe.

She couldn't have dreamed this up in her wildest fantasies back at the Circle. 

Leliana, Morrigan, and Alistair talk behind her as she approaches the small plinth that stands before the flames. It's very old, just as everything is in this place, and worn at the corners, but time hasn't blurred the words inscribed on the top.

"Cast off the trappings of worldly life and cloak yourself in the goodness of spirit," Marian reads aloud. "King and slave, lord and beggar; be born anew in the Maker's sight."

But what does it _mean_? The trappings of worldly life... The body, which houses the soul? What other kinds of worldly trappings could a king and slave have in common?

 _Be born anew_. The flames that block their path, which burn without fuel or smoke.

The answer comes to her like she'd always known it. She groans, closing her eyes. No one is going to like this.

To Marian's surprise, Morrigan shrugs and starts taking off her robes immediately, and even Leliana seems resigned to the necessity, if not exactly happy about the situation. Alistair, on the other hand... He flushes right up to his hairline, his eyes darting from Marian to Leliana and Morrigan before he swallows and looks determinedly at the ceiling. "Are you sure?" he asks.

"As sure as I can be," Marian says. She feels like she should apologize, though it's not her fault, nor is the situation that brought them here. "I'm not sure what would happen if we tried to go through without..." She trails off. She doesn't want to actually say it out loud, like that'll mean it's not really happening.

She doesn't want to undress in front of him, not like this. She's fantasized about it in other situations, _private_ situations – when it's their choice and they're ready. Alistair doesn't look any happier about it than she is, and it's wrong of her to take a little bit of satisfaction from that, but she does anyhow. Some men, like Zevran, would make this even worse in their blatant enjoyment. Some men would be watching Leliana and Morrigan strip with no respect for their privacy.

Sometimes she really appreciates that Alistair's a decent human being.

"You don't have to," Marian says. Alistair looks at her in confusion. "We're going to be..." She gropes for a word that's not _naked_. "Vulnerable," she decides. "Someone ought to watch our backs."

"Not literally, though," he says with a funny little movement of his mouth that she thinks is amusement.

"No," Marian says, blushing. "I didn't mean – " She makes a disgruntled noise when Alistair grins at her, though he's still red as a beet. 

His hands go to his belt. She whirls on the spot, immediately, instinctively, and then she sighs – she's being utterly ridiculous about this, and too precious about her naked body, like it's a prize. But he deserves his privacy, as do they all. 

"I won't look," Alistair says. It's a promise, and she believes him.

"Me, neither," she says softly.

Then there's nothing else for it. She leans her staff against the wall and takes off her belt, lifts the furs and her tabard over her head and sits down to pull off her boots. Her socks are rank; she stuffs them down into her boots and makes a face when Cú tries to shove his entire face in her boot.

She's nothing against being naked, and indeed Morrigan and Leliana have seen more of her than this, but she hates this. She hates being coerced.

Marian sighs, and strips off her shirt, undershirt, and breastband in one movement. She resists the urge to look over her shoulder, but she can see Morrigan out of the corner of her eye, and she's tapping her foot. Marian stands, shoves her smalls and pants down her legs and steps out of them, and then she's naked as the day she was born.

The air is heavy, hot and thick; she's so warm that she's sweating from the fires, from nerves, but she's come so far, through so much. This isn't going to stop her. Nothing's going to stop her, not now.

But she'd be an idiot not to be afraid.

It makes sense, though – if you want Andraste's power, Andraste's favor, then you must suffer as Andraste suffered. Burn, as she burnt. Marian holds her hand as close to the flames as she dares, and it's so, so hot. She can only hold her hand there for a second before she has to snatch it away. Her hand feels blistered, and she resists the dual urges to look at it and to heal it with magic. Looking at it will only make it hurt more, and healing it with magic might be frowned on by whoever is judging their progress.

Oh, she's scared. What she wouldn't give for a little reassurance right now. 

Marian takes a deep breath and walks into the fire. Morrigan follows at her right, and presumably Leliana and Alistair are coming too, though she won't turn her head and break her promise.

And she burns. First comes the pain, which is the warning before the piercing heat; then her skin blisters, and bubbles, and then the boils break open and start to char. Her hair and eyelashes burn away in a flash, and her eyelids dry up and her eyeballs burst, and all the while her nerves are screaming. So is she. Her muscles bake in her body, her bones snap...

She can no longer hold her balance and she falls out of the fire onto her hands and knees. She's shaking all over as she gasps for air, blessedly cool air in her lungs and washing over her skin. The stone floor is rough and cold under her hands. She _has_ hands, and not charred stumps – hands and eyelids, for her eyes are closed tight against the pain.

She opens her eyes. Her hands look just the way they're supposed to. She moves her fingers. They're a little stiff, probably from the illusory pain, but they don't actually hurt. Marian sits back on her heels, sweeping her hands over herself to check for other injuries, but she's whole and hearty, barring the ribs she'd cracked before. An illusion of pain, then? Something to test their resolve?

She turns her head to check on her friends before the rest of her brain catches up, and even though she instantly closes her eyes and turns away again, the glimpse she caught of Alistair, of his side and back, partially turned away, is seared on her eyelids. She wishes she hadn't seen – she _promised_. Damn it.

Oh, but he's gorgeous, smooth and golden and muscular. The long lines of his legs lead into a tight ass, broad shoulders and well-defined arms; she could just see the familiar edge of his profile. Her imagination fills in the rest.

Marian sighs. What's one more thing to feel guilty about?

Something flashes in her vision, an overwhelming white light that makes her wince and rub her eyes until her vision comes back. When it does, her clothes are back on her body where they belong, her staff in her hand, like nothing happened at all. She hadn't felt her uniform coming back to her; when she looks around, the place where she left her things is empty, and her friends are dressed and standing, just as confused as she is.

She could chalk it up to a very strange waking dream, if it weren't for that half-second glimpse of Alistair nude.

The familiar sounds of armor clashing behind her brings Marian up on her feet. She spins to find that it's the Guardian. He stops in the flames, regarding her steadily, and she requires no more than this to convince her that he's inhuman. Nothing could survive that. "You have been through the trials of the Gauntlet," he says, inclining his head to her. He's still calm, still serene, but he's also proud, quietly rejoicing in their success. Despite herself, his happiness is catching, and Marian smiles a little. "You have walked the path of Andraste, and like Her, you have been cleansed. You have proven yourself worthy, pilgrim. Approach the Sacred Ashes."

They've done it. Oh, Maker, they've actually _done_ it. Marian laughs out loud, incredulous and relieved, and spins to share her joy. But Leliana is already bowed in prayer, and Morrigan is examining the dais and the Urn with speculative interest. Only Alistair notices her attention and returns her smile, though he looks back at the Urn afterward. "I didn't think anyone could succeed in finding Andraste's final resting place..." he says softly. He shakes his head. "But here... here She is."

"Powerful magic, indeed," Morrigan says, in the same soft tones. No one seems to want to break the hushed silence of the chamber. It's a shame; this place was made for song, for echoes of the song and harmonies of the Chant to live forever. Marian looks up at the ceiling, at the gently rounded corners and sighs.

Marian approaches the dais with careful steps. The statue of Andraste waits for her, a naked flame in her hand that burns without fuel. She's watching the heavens – for the Maker, probably. The Urn lies at her feet. It's huge and ornate, made of an unusual golden stone that Marian doesn't recognize.

These are Andraste's ashes. Suddenly they're very real to her, and so is Andraste. She'd once been a human woman, who crossed the world twice over and brought the song of the Maker to so many people. These are her remains. They're not just some magical font of healing. Taking the ashes without some kind of acknowledgement feels... wrong. Marian closes her eyes and prays, not to the Maker, but to that woman who had the courage of her beliefs, who died for them. 

And then she reaches out, takes off the lid, and scoops a little bit of the ashes into her glove. _Is that enough?_ she wonders suddenly. _How much will Eamon need? How do I know?_ But her hand is already replacing the lid, like it has a mind of its own. In a strange kind of half-trance, she puts the ashes into a little twist of paper that she rips out of Genitivi's notebook, and stores that in one of her potion ingredient pouches.

That's it, then.

Marian stares at her hands, but they hold no answers for her, and when she turns around the Guardian is gone. Not that she had any real hopes of getting answers out of him, either, but she could have _tried_.

And she feels whole again, she realizes, at least in body. Her ribs are healed; indeed, it's like they were never injured at all. Even the blisters on her heels are gone. What kind of magic is this?

She goes back to her friends and waits for Leliana to finish praying, and then they take one of the side doors; it leads back out to the mountaintop where the dragon lives, and from there they make their way back to Genitivi. He's ecstatic at their news, but when Marian shows him the little pile of ashes, he's so overcome, goes so pale that Marian slides her hand under his elbow to keep him on his feet.

"Oh, Maker..." he breathes. "I'm not worthy to look upon..." He trails off, his eyes going distant. "What was it like? Coming to the Urn?"

Marian describes it all, from the Guardian to the murderous echoes of herself and her companions, the bridge puzzle, and finally the trial of fire. He's a good listener, and he has a way of asking questions that makes her really think about the answers. His years of interviewing the peoples of Thedas have taught him well.

"Thank you for this," she says, handing over the little notebook of his research. "It was useful. I tore a blank page out of the back, though..."

Genitivi shakes his head, dismissing the matter without a word. He clutches the notebook and looks around the temple. "Perhaps my research will not seem so much like blasphemy to the Chantry now," he says.

"I should hope so," Marian says, frowning.

"We must organize an expedition. There is so much history here. It must be studied. And... and pilgrims should be allowed to come to the Urn." Genitivi sounds overwhelmed with the plans he's making, with everything that he needs to do, and the enormity of the find he's just made. He's none too steady on his feet, either; Marian glances at Wynne, concerned for Genitivi's health, but Wynne just shakes her head. She's not sure what that means.

"We should start back," she suggests. Marian appoints herself Genitivi's support while walking, and he talks to her of his plans, of the scholars he'll bring here, and the suggestions he plans to make to the Chantry for smoothing the way for the pilgrims he anticipates.

Marian can't help but worry – not about the Urn, for the Guardian and the Gauntlet will probably be extremely efficient at keeping away the unsavory element, but for the pilgrims. This place isn't exactly safe. Genitivi won't be dissuaded, though, and with Leliana on his side he seems to be prepared to argue forever, so she lets it go.


	36. The Aftermath

Camp that night is quiet. The temple is somehow even more oppressive now that she knows it's empty. It's too big, she decides, lying awake on her pallet. Even the echoes are swallowed by that vast expanse of empty space. _Anything might be out there_ , her instincts say, even though her mind knows it's clear.

She's not the only one in a mood. Morrigan snapped at Zevran when he enquired about their adventures in the mildest of ways, Alistair is quiet, and Sten is so impatient to get back on the road that Marian had to remind him that humans need sleep. 

On the other side of the fire, Genitivi and Wynne are swapping stories of places they've been and mutual acquaintances; Marian would normally eavesdrop like her life's depending on it, but she can't work up an interest tonight. She doesn't want to think about her father anymore, but she can't avoid the thoughts the way she has. There are others she mourns, too. 

They never found Lissette's body in the Circle. Marian has been trying very hard not to think about what that means. 

But forgetting the people she's lost, pretending they'd never existed, is an insult both to them and to her feelings. And it's not like it would save her grief, either. Nothing can do that now.

And yet she doesn't think her father would want her carrying on like this. He wouldn't want her to hurt this way, not over him. She hates to disappoint him. She can't help it. 

Of course, Lissette would be incredibly disappointed that Marian wasn't weeping entire oceans of tears. Marian laughs, a little damp, and turns onto her side, and remembers...

Sometime during the impromptu wake she cries herself to sleep, and though her eyes are red and puffy the next morning, she feels better. 

It's two days back to the highway, and then another two days to Castle Redcliffe, with bandits and darkspawn and assassins dogging their every step. What could be better?

\---

Marian makes it all the way to noon without anyone trying to ask her existential questions or confess their life stories, which is a minor miracle in and of itself. The woods are lovely here, the trees seeming to race to see who can put out the first growth of the season, their leaves the pale, untested green of spring. Everywhere she looks is something beautiful. Even the weeds are a promise of new life on the way. 

All right, then. She can take a hint.

She scarfs down lunch and pushes herself up, intending to check in with everyone, but her gaze first falls on Alistair, who eats with a steady, grim look that Marian recognizes. Neither of them can skip eating anymore, not with the way that the blight in their blood burns through their energy, but that doesn't mean that they have to like it. Alistair looks like she feels. 

He won't talk here, though. He might not talk to her at all, but certainly he won't while everyone else is listening. 

_Hmm._

When they set out again, Marian dawdles with Cú just long enough to make sure she'll be at the rear and grabs Alistair's arm as he goes by. He turns a confused look on her, but she just raises her eyebrows expectantly. He shrugs and waits with her for everyone else to go by. 

Of course Marian's having second thoughts about this, now that it's too late to change her mind without looking weird. Alistair is their darkspawn detector – she's far too new to the blight in her blood to be sure in her abilities yet. He normally keeps to the front, where he'll sense the darkspawn in time to warn the rest of them.

But Sten is leading them, pushing the pace with his long legs. They'll be fine. Right?

Marian sends Cú racing to the front with a whistle, and then she follows Leliana onto the thin path, which forces them to walk in single file. She walks in silence until they come to the wider place in the path that she remembers from their trip into the interior. Then she goes more slowly, allowing the space between her and Leliana's back to grow larger, until she judges that they won't be overheard. Only then does she look over her shoulder at Alistair and tilt her head, silently inviting him to walk alongside her.

He looks a little uncomfortable, but he joins her, and they walk together in silence while Marian wonders what she can say. She doesn't want to push him; she has this feeling that he'll go stubborn and stop talking altogether. 

Maybe she just wants to know that she's not alone in feeling this way, and to make sure that he knows it, too. So how does she get there?

"Jowan and Lissette were my best friends at the Circle," Marian says. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the startled way his head turns. He hadn't been expecting that, then. Good. She keeps her eyes forward, and snorts a little. "Jowan you've met."

"It was memorable," Alistair agrees. It's not quite his usual wry sarcasm, but he's trying. She appreciates the effort.

"I couldn't find Lissette," she says. She presses her lips tight against yet more tears – she's so _tired_ of crying – and sighs. "She'd be so angry with me that I'm not out here doing all the things we said we'd do if we got out."

"Like what?" He sounds honestly curious, and she glances at him quickly to find him watching her.

"Oh, lots of things," she says, remembering all those nights they stayed up and talked in the girl's dormitories. "We'd drink ale until we were sick, and stay up all night to watch the stars – that one is _not_ as fun as we imagined it – and meet fabulous people..." She trails off. The rest of _that_ conversation isn't fit for male ears. "But really I think she just wanted to go home again. To Val Foret. Sometimes she'd get letters from her parents, and we were all so jealous – not many people want to acknowledge their little mageling baby."

"Mail call was like that at the monastery, too," Alistair says, his voice far away. "The rich ones got letters all the time, and they treated it like it was nothing." He sighs. "Arl Eamon wrote sometimes, at the beginning, but I never wrote back. Eventually he stopped."

"It must have been hard to leave home," Marian says quietly.

Alistair laughs, short and choppy, with no humor in it. "I couldn't have reacted worse," he says, reaching up to touch his chest. Marian knows that he wears his mother's amulet under his armor where it's safe. He never takes it off. That was when he'd broken it, she remembers him saying, when Arl Eamon sent him away. "I missed it, all of it, even the smell of fish that never washed out."

"And the people," Marian says, wanting her mother more than anything.

"And the people," Alistair agrees.

What, or who, had he seen to send him down into the depths like this? Eamon? Duncan? Goldanna? Does she even know him well enough to guess? He must have had friends, in Redcliffe or at the monastery. But he's never mentioned anyone from those times. 

She'll never know if she doesn't ask, but she finds herself curiously reluctant to break their implicit silence. It feels like trespassing on what ought to be the privacy of his memories.

Marian opens her mouth, hesitates, and then mentally shakes herself. _Faint heart never won fair maiden_ , she reminds herself. She stifles a giggle, slightly hysterical, and shakes her head when Alistair raises his eyebrow at her. 

She doesn't think he'd appreciate that particular reference.

Marian takes his hand and sidles a little closer as they walk. "If you want to talk about it..." she says, holding his eyes with her own and hoping he knows that she means it, most sincerely. Then she looks away to watch the path. She won't push. 

"Do _you_ want to talk about it?" Alistair asks. She looks up, startled, to find him watching her, almost like he's worried.

Well, and why shouldn't he be? She's been quiet, too, and it's probably easy to tell that she's been crying. She's just... not used to being the one someone worries over. Not anymore. 

"I want it not to have happened," she says with a smile that's meant to be reassuring, but to her horror, it wobbles. She takes a quick breath and looks away, but she knows he saw it; his hand tightens on hers.

They walk in silence for a long while, long enough for Marian to regain her equilibrium. The silence isn't fraught, or tense, or awkward, but she knows he's thinking about something serious from the look on his face. He doesn't let go of her hand, and so neither does she let go of his. 

"It was Duncan," Alistair says reluctantly, breaking the silence. "In that little room where we were separated. Duncan was there."

Marian looks up at him, at his face; he's so lost, even now, after everything. Ostagar wasn't that long ago. How could she have thought he was over this? He'd hero-worshipped Duncan, that much she knew even if she hadn't been able to figure out why. 

"You miss him," she says.

"He'd have known what to do," Alistair says, bleak with regret. "Not like us, bumbling around with our thumbs up our arses."

"We're not doing so badly," she protests, but he's right. Duncan wouldn't have to skulk around Ferelden to beg and borrow the support they need. He would have gone straight to the source of their problems and solved it, by any means necessary. He'd been a formidable man, with formidable skills. Marian sighs. "You're right, though. I wish he'd explained more. I wish he were here."

"Me, too," Alistair says, squeezing her hand. "I miss him. He was a good man." He's quiet for a moment. "Who did you see?"

"My father," she says softly. "Just the way I remembered him."

Alistair grips her hand a little tighter, draws her in a little closer, bolsters her with the simple touch of his hand on hers and his solid presence, a bulwark between her and the rest of the world. He doesn't say anything, though, and Marian's thankful for that. "Maybe the dead can't sleep if we mourn them too much," he says after a while. "Maybe we're supposed to let them go."

That hurts more than she would have expected it to. Let him go? Can she? She misses her father quite desperately, but if that were the millstone around his neck, then... Marian doesn't think she could bear the idea that her grief is the millstone around his neck. He deserves to go to his rest unencumbered by her, his least-in-sight daughter. 

She has nothing to offer Alistair, no insight or insulting little moralistic tale that will fix him. He's not broken, and neither is she, but they are hurting. She only has herself to offer, her presence and her affection, and she can only pray that it's enough. That _she's_ enough. Marian tugs him to a halt with their joined hands and when he looks at her, confused, she slides her arms around his neck and hugs him tight, rubbing the side of her face against his.

His hands go to her waist, at first tentative in surprise, but soon enough he wraps his arms around her and ducks his face into the soft, secret place between her shoulder and neck. She's pressed against him all the way down to her thighs. If they weren't wearing their armor, this would feel very different. She puts that thought aside for later and turns her nose into his hair. He smells like unwashed man and metal, frankly, but in some strange way she's come to like it, to associate it with him. It's comforting. 

She spares a passing thought for what she must be doing to his hair, which he keeps always so neat, but she doesn't care. Neither does he, from the way he keeps pressing her closer, tightening his arms around her until she's as close to him as she can possibly be. 

Marian can't feel tears on her neck, but he's breathing sort of strangely, like he's trying to keep from crying. She wishes he wouldn't, not when it's just them, but she already knows she's not going to say a word. He can cope however he chooses.

She wonders if he's ever had anyone to comfort him like this, with concern and affection. Her heart aches for him and the little boy who's never once in his life been put first. 

\---

When they catch up to the rest, Leliana looks at them over her shoulder, glances quite deliberately from Marian to Alistair, and winks at Marian. How she can come to that kind of conclusion when they both look wrecked, Marian can't imagine... but then she looks at Alistair again, and the short hairs on the side of his head do sort of look like she's had her fist in them. His lower face is flushed from what Marian assumes is the heated skin of her neck. Marian probably has the beginnings of beard burn on her cheek from Alistair's stubble.

 _Damn_. They don't need this, not when they're both off-kilter. If her companions chase Alistair back into his shell of nerves, she'll have her vengeance, and it won't be pretty. 

Marian tries to communicate that with her eyes, and Leliana just grins and turns around again. Marian sighs. Leliana's a good sort, though, she probably won't tell. Marian wipes the evidence clean from their faces with a small healing spell for each of them, though it's more effort for less result than she's gotten for a long time. She's got a tension headache and she aches all over. She needs some sleep. His hair is more stubborn, refusing to be smoothed into place, but it doesn't matter so much in the absence of other evidence. 

Alistair is better, more present, that night at dinner. Even Morrigan deigns to eat with them that night. Afterward, after knife-fighting and meditation, Marian has second watch, the two hours from midnight on – though with no timepieces it usually ends up being when the person before her can't stay awake any longer. It's hard for her to get back to sleep after she wakes Leliana for third watch; she's restless, and the tension headache from before has spread into her shoulders and back. Thinking about it isn't going to get her anywhere. She wipes all thought from her mind with a ruthless hand and manages to force herself into sleep.

When she wakes up, her thighs are slick, wet and cold. Marian grimaces and touches her thigh; her fingers come away bloody. She drops her head back onto her bedroll with a sigh.

Of course. She's not regular, and she'd wondered how long she would get away without having her monthly. She'd been hoping for longer than this, though. 

Marian has a few rags in the pack she's using as a pillow, but nothing to hold them in place. She cleans herself as best as she can with a rag and the dregs of what's left in her water skin, and then she raises her voice and calls for Leliana.

Leliana puts her head through the opening of the tent they're now sharing and opens her mouth to ask what's wrong, but then she notices the bloody rag in Marian's hand. "Oh," Leliana says, her brow furrowing in concern. "I thought – Do you have anything?"

"I have more of these," Marian says, gesturing with the bloody rag she's holding because putting it down will make more of a mess. "I don't have anything else, though."

Leliana searches through the packs scattered around their tent and comes up with a cotton undershirt she rips apart into strips with ruthless disregard for her wardrobe. 

"Thank you," Marian says, accepting the cotton with a grimace. "I should have been prepared, and obviously I'm not."

"I had no idea," Leliana says, sitting back on her heels and regarding Marian with that same concerned look. "Are you not drinking the tea?"

"What tea?" Marian asks, completely lost by this turn in the conversation. 

"It's made with the sap of the witherstalk," Leliana says, cautiously, like she's not sure how Marian will react. Should that mean something to her? _Sap of the witherstalk_... Marian turns her mind over to see what falls out. A fragment of memory comes to her, a conversation she'd overheard between two of the gossiping girls in her dormitory. They'd been talking about one of the more foolish apprentices who'd fallen pregnant, and why hadn't she... 

_Why didn't she just use witherstalk sap, like everyone else? It only takes a little, and it doesn't taste_ that _bad. No worse than –_

 _Oh_. "A contraceptive?" Marian asks. "Are you – " She stops, thinking better of asking Leliana if she's sleeping with someone; none of the available options are flattering to anyone involved, and she's pretty sure that she would have noticed if her tent-mate had been sneaking out of a night. 

"Not just a contraceptive, though it does serve that purpose," Leliana says, her expression easing. Had she thought Marian would make a fuss? Over this? How ridiculous. "It puts your natural cycle on hold as long as you drink it. A woman on the road is wise to take precautions."

Marian grasps the reference immediately and shivers. She's wondered a time or two whether that might happen to her, but it seems so remote, so unreal – 

But it would, wouldn't it, until it happened to her. Everyone thinks themselves invincible until something changes their mind. 

Leliana promises to bring her some later and withdraws to give Marian privacy to deal with the mess between her thighs. When she's done and everything is where it belongs, she joins the rest in breakfast and tearing down camp. Marian ends up in the rear again, this time through no fault of her own. Leliana and Zevran are ahead of her, and Zevran immediately launches into a charm offensive.

"Have you given any more thought to our conversation of yesterday?" Zevran asks Leliana, pitching his voice to carry. Whatever the purpose of this is, it's meant to be public.

Leliana shakes her head. "I have told you what I wish you to know. As to the rest, I'm afraid your curiosity must go unsatisfied."

"Heartless cruelty," Zevran accuses her, lazily amused. Marian laughs despite herself. "You must know I'm not used to this... _going unsatisfied_." He lays delicate, affected disdain on the phrase, treating it like it's someone else's soiled laundry he's found in his things. 

"You must give me leave to doubt that," Leliana says, clear amusement in her voice. 

Zevran laughs. "Somehow I suspect you take what you wish, though naturally, as a gentleman, I can deny you nothing, dear lady."

"If only I could believe that," Leliana says. She's acting quite unlike herself, coy and theatrical, and yet Marian senses a thread of genuine amusement underneath it all. Was this what she was like when she was a bard? Had she sparkled and charmed the Orlesians she was sent to rob and kill?

Are Leliana and Zevran so different, in the end? 

It's a question that preoccupies her for the rest of the day. It's not that she doubts Leliana, not really. But she'd had such an immediate and negative response to Zevran's choice of occupation, in sharp contrast to the way she'd only felt relieved that Leliana had admitted the truth, at last. Of course, Zevran had actually tried to kill them, and Marian's still not sure that he's not merely biding his time for another opportunity to fulfill his contract. 

She trusts Leliana. She doesn't trust Zevran. But can she trust her own judgement?


	37. The Kiss

That night at camp, Leliana and Brother Genitivi put on an impromptu performance of _Dane and the Werewolf_. Marian sits on a log, her chin resting on her hands, and listens. The story is always the same, but the singer who brings something of themselves to the song can transform this old and familiar tale into magic. And there's magic in the clearing tonight. Even the trees are listening, leaning in like they can't get enough. It's pitch-black outside of the surrounding circle of trees, and the little circle of firelight feels – cozy, intimate, like there's nothing outside of this place, of these people, of this story. Genitivi sings the part of the werewolf, Dane's opposite, who takes his place amongst the humans for a year and a day while Dane runs with the werewolves of the forest. 

Cú sits at her feet, watching Leliana intently, for all the world like he understands every word. Just how smart are mabari, really? Zevran lays on his side between them and the fire, chewing on a strip of dried boar in an abstracted fashion, and Wynne is repairing her staff off to the side while she listens. Morrigan is somewhere behind her, pretending not to listen, and Sten is already lying on his bedroll, though she can see that his eyes are open. 

The log she occupies is hers alone, though, or at least it is until Alistair sits next to her with a sigh. He'd been doing his share of the dishes, which doesn't amount to much while they're without Bodahn and his kitchen gear, but the little stream that winds its way parallel to the path is fed by the mountains above and he's scrubbed his hands red with cold. 

Her eyebrows draw together as she watches him rub his hands together for warmth. _Are you all right?_ she mouths at him, silent so she doesn't interrupt the performance. 

He shivers melodramatically, but when she grows truly concerned and calls magic to her hands, he shakes his head and grins at her, so smug now that he's tricked her into concern. More fool him.He's still got his hands curled inside each other, though, so Marian takes one of his hands between both of hers and blows on it. She can tell he's staring at her, but she doesn't look up. Instead she slowly rubs the warmth of her breath into his skin.

Leliana and Genitivi are singing a duet now, their voices twining around each other, but she's not listening to them; she's listening to the man beside her, to his slightly uneven breathing and the tension in his thigh pressed up against hers. They're both in soft clothes. She can feel everything. His hand is large, his fingers long; it takes both of her hands to do a proper job of warming his. He's trimmed his nails to the quick sometime recently, she notices.

When his hand feels no cooler than hers, she looks up at him at last, and flushes at the look in his eyes. She's so aware of every inch of him, especially the ones she's touching, of every tiny movement of his body, of the way he's watching her, like she's something he's not quite sure he's allowed to have.

 _Have me_ , she nearly says. 

Instead she reaches over and takes his other hand with one of hers; it's not so cold as the first one was, and she sets him right with only the warmth of her hands. 

Her excuse to touch him is gone, and she doesn't want to push too hard. She hasn't had time to think about his curious reluctance, they aren't exactly alone... Still, it's a long moment before she can convince herself that enough is enough. She lets go of his hands, intending to put hers back in her lap – 

Instead, Alistair captures her right hand with his and holds it tightly. He's avoiding her gaze now, watching Leliana with bright eyes, but he folds his hand around hers, interlacing their fingers and resting their joined hands on his thigh. 

His very muscular thigh. His very _close_ thigh. His thigh that leads... elsewhere. 

It's hard to pay attention to _Dane and the Werewolf_ after that, but who could blame her? 

She's so caught up in the way she feels, in the way her body rises to meet his, that Marian jumps ten feet in the air when Cú howls, long and loud and mournful. She gasps for breath, her heart thundering in her breast – but Zevran and Leliana are _laughing_ at her, like the assholes they are, and even Wynne is hiding a smile. After a long, excruciatingly embarrassing moment, Genitivi stands up, drawing their attention away. He takes a deep, theatrical breath, tilts his head back, and howls at the moon – but Cú's actually the one howling on Genitivi's cue. Marian laughs a little, completely dumbfounded.

"You are so smart," she murmurs to Cú, scratching him a little just where he likes it. He grins at her, so pleased with himself that she has to laugh again. Alistair's knee nudges hers. This is a good night.

It doesn't take long for Leliana to recapture their attention. Marian is genuinely disappointed when the performance is over. They've only made it through about half of the story; they're promised the second half the next night, when they're safely on the Imperial Highway. 

Marian stretches her legs out in front of her and wiggles her toes. She's got enough callouses now to cover half of Denerim, but her feet still hurt of an evening, especially after a full day's march. At least she doesn't have to suffer the blisters, not with Wynne around.

Regretfully she loosens her grip on Alistair's hand. It's time to get up, to go to bed and try for what little sleep she's allowed. The rest are taking themselves off to bed, too, all except Alistair, who has first watch. Sten just has to close his eyes – _smart man_ , Marian thinks, smiling. She might steal that idea tomorrow if it's warmer.

But Alistair isn't letting go of her hand. Marian frowns at him, but he's not even paying attention to her; instead he watches as Wynne settles Genitivi into one of the tents and goes in after him. After that, they're alone – almost. Sten can sleep anywhere, through anything, though she's no doubt that if there were an attack he'd be on his feet in an instant. He has the gift of falling asleep in an instant, though, and he'd never eavesdrop. That would imply that he cared about their conversation.

No, they're _alone_. Even Cú has abandoned them in favor of Morrigan's solitary little campfire in pursuit of his frankly strange doggy crush on Morrigan. A thousand possibilities crowd Marian's mind, and her insides go all taut and tense. 

Alistair lets go of her hand to rub his own against his legs in a nervous gesture. "I wanted to talk to you," he says. "I wanted to..." 

She waits as patiently as she's able for him to finish that sentence, with all of its interesting implications and possibilities, but he doesn't. He looks nervous, and her expectant eyes on his face seem to be making it worse, so she tips her head back and looks at the stars burning brightly through the gap in the treetops. She can't make them fit into the star charts she knows by heart, no matter how she tries. Her books are not as representative of the real world as she would like. Is that Silence's horn, or the hilt of the Sword of Mercy? Is that Satina playing for the Maiden as she dances across the sky? She rather thinks that one is the Wolf, guarding his section of sky like he's afraid it'll be taken from him. 

She wonders if one of the others can point out where the constellations live in the sky. She wonders if Sten knows different constellations than she does. Maybe that information is just useless enough for Sten to give her – if he's decided that she's worth following, after all. He hasn't spoken to her since their conversation in Haven. She hasn't been successful at getting much of anything out of him, actually. She doesn't even know why he's here in Ferelden, or the story behind the cage. 

That's a sobering thought she wishes hadn't come to her just now.

All in all, it comes as a surprise when Alistair takes her hand again; she tips her head to the side and looks at him out of the corner of her eye. He's watching her, a little determined, a little nervous. His pupils are dilated, and half of his face is in shadow, carving his features into strong lines. He holds his mouth soft, and uncertain. She wants to kiss him. She's wanted to kiss him since, oh, _Lothering_. He's been hovering just out of her reach for so long, seemingly uncertain about what he really wants. She wants to give him space. She wants to let him decide what he wants without outside interference. But she has other wants, and she has needs, too.

Marian slides her fingers between his and slowly smiles at him, a smile full of something shared and secret that lives between them. She offers the smile as a gift, as an invitation, with the full scope of what she feels for him. It's more than desire, more than affection and humor and steadfast, unfailing loyalty. She's not really interested in defining it right now, content to let it be what it is, to let it glow a constant warm heat in her chest. 

His eyes flicker down to her mouth. His eyes are... _very_ intent. 

Is he...

Marian sits upright, turns to sit sideways on the log facing Alistair. He glances away, but then he looks back, like he can't stop. Like he can't look away. Neither can she. There's something suspended between them, drawn taut, pulling them together. 

She puts her spare hand on his knee for the balance that she needs to lean up and kiss him. He opens his mouth – 

And then Alistair starts to talk, like it's what he meant to do all along. "So... " he says, playing with her fingers, drawing back to put distance between them. His nerves are so apparent that any irritation Marian may or may not be feeling dissolves beneath resigned amusement. She may go mad from sexual frustration before he gets his head around her intentions, but at least he's thinking about it. "All this time we've spent together... you know: the tragedy, the brushes with death, the constant battles with the whole Blight looming over us... will you miss it once it's over?"

He seems really and truly interested in her answer. Maybe he's not brushing her off after all. 

"Oh, I just _love_ scrubbing darkspawn out of my clothes," Marian says, wrinkling her nose. "I can't wait until I don't have to worry about washing darkspawn blood off of my teeth."

"No more abominations..." he says, grinning.

"Or insane dragon worshippers..." she adds.

"No more running for our lives from assassins, no more darkspawn... ugh, and no more camping in the middle of nowhere." He shudders theatrically, making it clear that that's the real issue at stake, and she has to laugh.

"You know, I think I will miss it," she says in surprise. She hasn't really thought about it, but... If she hadn't joined the Wardens, she'd be in quite a different place right now. She'd have been slapped into the cells with Anders, poor sod. She'd probably be demon fodder.

They hadn't found Anders, either. She hadn't even thought to check. Maybe the cells had been low enough on the rebels' list that he'd been spared Lissette's fate, but she doubts it.

"Duncan saved my life when he recruited me," Marian says. "I knew that then, and I was grateful, but I didn't have to stay. I could have fled at any time." She meets Alistair's eyes squarely, making the choice to let him in, to give him whatever he's looking for. "I made a choice to join the Wardens, to do what I could, and I don't regret it." She smiles at him a little, tightening her fingers around his. "How could I?"

He looks down at his hand in hers. He seems to take some courage from it, which hurts Marian in a tiny, obscure part of her heart. He can't be this unsure of her, can he? Hasn't she made it clear that he can talk to her about anything? "I know it... might sound strange, considering we haven't known each other for very long, but I've come to... care for you." Alistair looks up then at her then, his heart in his eyes and in his voice, that heart she'd once said he wore on his sleeve, that heart she can't bear to have hurt – he's just _giving_ it to her. "A great deal."

He doesn't know. _He doesn't know how she feels about him_. There are real nerves on his face, in his voice, in his hand on hers. There too is hope, desire, and that wry, self-deprecating amusement that she loves. How could he not know? 

He drops his eyes to their hands again, playing with the fingernail on her thumb in lieu of the worry stone he keeps in his pocket. "I think maybe it's because we've gone through so much together, I don't know." A new, more vulnerable note enters his voice as he looks up at her face. "Or maybe I'm imagining it. Maybe I'm fooling myself. Am I? Fooling myself? Or do you think you might ever... feel the same way about me?" 

He's so delightfully earnest, so anxious as he waits for her answer, that any pique blows away with the breeze rustling the trees. If he needs a clear and direct affirmation, well... There are worse things. At least she knows her feelings are welcome; Alistair hadn't even known that, even if she thinks he should have. She admires his courage, both in combat and out.

Marian swings herself into his lap, settling herself close to his knees rather than cuddling up to him the way she wants to, avoiding areas that she's no right to be touching just yet. She's shocked him, she can tell. His hands go to her waist to steady her and then they freeze there; she imagines that he's having the same concerns about what he's allowed to touch. She'll clear that up with him later. Marian leans down to touch her forehead against his, closing her eyes and sighing. "I care for you, too," she says softly. She opens her eyes again to find Alistair staring at her, stunned delight blooming in his eyes. "Very much. More than anyone I've ever met."

He tugs her a little closer in his lap. "So I fooled _you_ , did I? Good to know." His voice drops into a deeper register, something that's probably intended to be amused, but to Marian it's like he's seducing her with his voice, with the transparent happiness in his eyes, the way his body feels between her legs and under her hands. 

Her breath sounds so loud in her own head that she can't believe he can't hear how unsteady it is. "Alistair..." 

Alistair slides his hand behind her neck and pulls her face just a little closer, so she feels the quick, steadying inhale he takes on her mouth. 

And then he kisses her. 

Her breath hitches a little before she holds it in, unwilling to do anything to interrupt this. His mouth is soft and very warm on hers, almost shy, like he doesn't know if this is what he's supposed to be doing. _Oh, Alistair_. Marian curls her hands around his neck, her thumbs on his jaw. She can feel the fine tension in his muscles – he's still nervy. Her insides melt. She kisses him back with the boundless affection and tension and excitement that he brings to life inside of her, hoping that she can get across just a little of what he means to her.

She draws back regretfully. His hand twitches a little on the back of her neck, like he wants her to come back, like he's not done with her yet, and that pleases her immensely. She knows she's got a huge, foolish grin on her face. Alistair's blushing a dull red, but he's grinning too, and she rubs her nose against his just to hear him laugh. Marian can't stop touching him, running her thumbs along the line of his jaw, scraping the bristly growth of red-gold beard that he carefully grooms every morning. His fingers are playing with the tiny wisps of hair at the base of her skull, tugging the curls straight and letting them spring back into shape. It pulls on her scalp a little. It's nice. 

"That wasn't too soon, was it?" he asks softly. 

Marian gives him a hugely scornful look that should tell him what she thinks of _that_ idea. "You clearly have no idea how long I've wanted to jump you," she says, ducking in to kiss him again before he can ask the question. She's not hiding it, because she's not ashamed, but she's feeling playful and Alistair doesn't seem to mind. They come up for air again, and this time he's smirking.

"I'll take that as a good sign," he says, waggling his eyebrows in exaggerated lechery. She makes a face at him and reluctantly shifts her weight back, sitting upright. It's time to get up; he's got this watch, and neither of them are in any fit state to be on guard when the other's around. But Alistair's hand tightens on her waist, the grin sliding off his face. He looks at her like... It's almost reverential, the way he watches her, his face nearly enveloped in the shadows created by her body. "Maker's breath, but you're beautiful," he says, his big hand warm on her face. He is so sincere in his affection, in his open regard for her, that it sends shivers down her spine. "I'm a lucky man."

"I think I'm the lucky one," she says, leaning down for one more fleeting kiss before she slips out of his lap. "Good night, Alistair."

"Good night," Alistair echoes. She looks over her shoulder when she reaches her tent. He's watching her go. If they had a little privacy and five minutes of free time...

She slips into her tent. It's empty. Leliana must be – She has no idea where Leliana is, actually, which is a good thing right now. She needs some time alone. She can feel the ghost of Alistair's touch on her waist, on her face and on her hands, the way he looked at her, like she was the only thing he could see. Her breath is unsteady; she closes her eyes and traces her own face. He'd touched her here. He'd kissed her. Marian traces her lips, imagining how she'll kiss him tomorrow. She won't push him... but she can offer him the things he doesn't know how to ask for. 

She'll open her mouth, just a little, so he can feel her breath on his lips. She could press against him to bring the rest of her body to his attention the way she'd avoided doing tonight. She covers her breasts with her hands, her nipples pressing sharply against her palms even through her shirt; they're tight, tingling, sensitive to the roughly woven cloth of her breastband.

If she's going to do this, it needs to be fast to finish before Leliana returns. She mustn't be caught bloody-handed. That shouldn't be a problem with the way she's feeling. 

She strips down to her smalls and crawls beneath her blanket. It's cold tonight, and in an abstract sort of way she can feel it, but her skin's radiating heat like a bonfire and her bedroll heats up quickly. She pulls the blanket over her head and cocoons herself underneath, in a space that's just her and her imagination.

And her imagination is fertile, indeed.

Her nipples are hard and aching. She licks her fingers and soothes them with long, dragging strokes that spark along her skin. Is this how he'd touch her? Would he run his fingers under her breasts, along the delicate, sensitive skin, just to make her shiver? She tries to imagine the way his long, blunt fingers would feel on her body. He might...

She slips her hand into her smallclothes. She's so needy, so wet and horny, that her clit is swollen and she flinches against the first touch. It sends a shock of electric near-pain down her legs and up into her shoulders, into her throat, stealing her breath. She approaches it more cautiously after that, using the hood as protection and gentling her clit with gradually increasing pressure until she's breathless, silently sobbing, desperately chasing the orgasm that hovers just out of reach. Alistair is there behind her, his warm body cradling hers; it's his fingers on her breast, on her clit – 

She curls around her own fingers as she comes, fire and the heat detonating in her mind and leaving her blank and breathless and coasting on aftershocks. She can't help stroking herself one last time with her fingers and sobs when she comes _again_ , not as good as the first but still overwhelming. 

She's never this sensitive. She must have been wound up tighter than she realized. 

She's taken the edge off her physical need, but she still wishes that Alistair were really here with her, not just in her mind. It's a pipe dream, at least for now. She'll wait for him to be ready, because she's not interested in pressuring him, but she's sure to be spending a lot of time with her own hands.

He doesn't exactly act like someone with a lot of relationship experience. Actually... Eamon shipped Alistair off to the monastery when he was ten, didn't he? And then he was sent to templar training. Marian's never seen a female templar, and the Sisters at the monastery would have been dedicated to the Maker and Andraste when they enter service. 

Oh Maker, could he be – is he a _virgin_?

Marian rolls onto her back with a groan. It would explain things, but... 

Maybe she's wrong. Maybe he's just shy. She'll have to ask him soon, sometime when it's just them and their nosy companions aren't around to eavesdrop. The last thing she wants is for someone like Morrigan to get hold of _this_. She'd never stop laughing.


	38. The Virgin

Left to his own devices, Alistair will make breakfast awkward, not out of desire but natural and unfortunate inclination. So when she's dressed and armored, Marian goes to him and stretches up to kiss him on the cheek, in full sight of everyone. He smells good, sweat and man and smoke from the campfire. The tip of Alistair's ears go red, but he grins at her anyway. "Good morning." She can hear faint laughter and Morrigan making disgusted little catsick noises somewhere in the background, but she doesn't care. His smile is worth it.

"Good morning," she says quietly. There's something incredibly intimate about him being the last person she spoke to before bed and the first person she spoke to in the morning.

Someday she'll tell him what she got up to in between. When the time is right.

They pack camp, quicker now with all their practice, and they're on their way at first light. The Imperial highway is close. This part of Ferelden is technically part of the arling of Redcliffe, and it's Eamon's duty to keep the roads clear and in as good repair as he can manage. That obviously doesn't extend to what's little more than a deer track, but once they get to the highway, their pace should improve.

All Marian really wants at the moment is a bath. She is _foul_. She thinks with wistful longing about the bathtub at Redcliffe Castle. She plans on spending some quality time with that tub. And maybe afterward, she can lure Alistair back to the library.

It's easier going back than it was going up; they're walking in the trail that they blazed on the way to Haven, and every step leads them closer to the warmer weather of the plains. Marian keeps herself to herself, sending Cú up front to Alistair and Zevran. She doesn't want company for right now. Something is changing inside of her. She feels different, unsettled – and yet it doesn't feel wrong, or sick like darkspawn, or inhuman like demons. It feels like the anticipatory tension that drew her to Alistair last night, like possibilities, like excitement. It's like walking the edge of a cliff without a guiderope – she might fall, but oh, what a view.

Marian's not afraid of falling. If nothing else, she knows Alistair will catch her, knows it with the kind of bone-deep certainty that's one of the reasons she's so fond of him. She can just see Alistair from her position in line, his shield on his back and Cú trotting alongside him. His hair gleams in the midday sunlight. She grins.

"The road is ahead!" Zevran calls back to the rest of them. They increase their pace, which is easier when the track starts to spread wider, and soon they're standing on the cracked and ancient stones of the Imperial highway. Marian stamps her foot on one just to feel paving stone under her boot instead of rocks.

Now it's Marian's turn to put her shoulder under Genitivi's, whose leg is still paining him despite everything Wynne can do. He needs the help to keep their pace. She's offered to slow them down before, or split into halves, but he won't hear of it; Eamon is far more important than he is, Genitivi insists.

She hates to agree, but under the circumstances... Still, she does what she can to keep him comfortable, including forcing potions on him until he swears at her. They can buy more elfroot. Genitivi is not a renewable resource.

They make camp that night in a small hollow not far from the road. It's her turn to dig out the refuse trench, which doesn't take long. Leliana and Genitivi have already started the second half of _Dane and the Werewolf_ when she gets back, though, so she lies on her back in the grass with her dog and lets the familiar story take her somewhere else, to a far-away time when werewolves were real.

It's soothing, actually, and between that and the soft grass cradling her, Marian falls asleep. Her dreams are fire and shadow, forming shapes that whisper to each other just out of earshot. If she could just get closer, maybe she could understand them...

Alistair shakes her awake later, his hand curling over her shoulder even after she opens her eyes and blinks at him kneeling over her. "I thought even a mage had the sense to come in out of the rain," he teases.

Marian squints at the night sky behind him; there are clouds rolling in, but they're not directly threatening the camp just yet. "I thought even a templar had the sense not to wake sleeping mages," she says, her voice low with amusement and sleep-rough. She stretches long and hard, dislodging Alistair's hand, but she grabs it before he can get too far and tugs. "Come down here." There's no one else close, though she can hear the others at a little distance.

Alistair shakes his head regretfully. "Wynne wants you, or I would." He studies her for a moment, and she lets him, concerned by the seriousness on his face. "Are you all right?"

"It's just meditation," she says. "In Haven... in the little store..." Alistair remembers what happened, she can tell. His face is grim. She hates that she chased the humor from his eyes. "I lost control, and that can't ever happen. Ever. Meditation helps."

He pulls her upright by their joined hands. "Then you should go," he says, nodding at Wynne's tent. "I wouldn't want to keep her waiting, anyway. That woman is terrifying."

After a moment's hesitation, he leans forward and kisses her, a soft touch of mouths that's a sweet balm to her soul. She wants to pull him to her again, to get her hands in his hair and on his skin, to see if he responds to her the way she responds to him.

Marian holds on when he starts to pull away. "I wanted to talk to you," she says regretfully. They have so little time to themselves when the pace is this hard.

"Tomorrow?" Alistair suggests.

"Only if we take point." She doesn't want anyone overhearing this conversation, and from the look on Alistair's face, he agrees. 

\---

It's a bad night's work. She's left heartsick with a sore and aching mind, like someone's scraped her insides with a spoon. Leliana is asleep already, and Cú is snoring at the end of her bedroll, but she can't face sleep yet. Not like this.

Her pack of potion ingredients is close. The box she wants is all the way at the bottom, of course, but she digs it out without waking anyone and settles crosslegged on her bed before opening it. Alistair's rose is as perfect as it was the day he gave it to her, the color rich and the petals soft and silky against her skin. Marian puts her nose in it and lets the scent sooth her ragged edges. She's still a little shocked that he gave her something like this, something so outrageously sentimental – and so lovely. It should have been a mawkish moment, ruined by his insecurities and her fears, but somehow they'd met in the middle with honesty.

Alistair thinks her rare and wonderful. She can almost hear him saying it, replaying the moment in her mind, the look in his eyes and the gentle touch of his fingers... 

Oh, she's being completely revolting, but it's hard to care. Doesn't she deserve something – someone – that makes her happy? No one's ever treated her with such respect and care before. No one's intrigued her like this before. No one's ever given her a flower before.

...this flower. The flower he gave her _weeks_ ago. 

Marian looks at the rose in her hands, confusion dawning. It looks like it was picked this morning. It's _perfect_. But Alistair picked it in Lothering, and he's been carrying it around ever since – And she's had it for weeks and never given it a second thought until now. It should be long dead, petals dropped away and the stem withered and brittle. 

But it's not. It's practically dewy. Marian strokes one of the petals, reaching out with magic and all of her senses, but she can't feel anything strange or magical about it. It's just a rose. She cups it in her hands, sending more of her magic into it, but still, there's nothing. Magical objects are almost always exude magic like a perfume, but there are some, like dweomers, that need to be activated before they can be used; before that they don't advertise their magical origins. Still, she feels nothing. It's not dead, or an object, but it is still just a flower, lying inert in her hands. 

It just is. But what it is is _impossible_. 

She scrambles up to talk to Wynne before she remembers that everyone else is asleep, and that includes Wynne, who is old as dust and needs her beauty sleep. She swears right out loud. She'll have to wait until tomorrow – but the curiosity is riding her, and she wants to know _now_.

Leliana murmurs from her bedroll, and Marian freezes, hoping Leliana will just roll over and go back to sleep. 

"Marian?"

Her luck's run out, it seems. 

Leliana sits up, pushing hair out of her face. "Is everything all right?"

Immediately Marian folds her hands around the rose, hiding it from sight. She doesn't want Leliana to see it. "It's nothing," she says, willing her face calm. "I spilled flaxseed everywhere." 

Marian opens the bottom of her cupped hands, dropping the rose back into its box, and closes the lid. She has no real hope that she's actually convinced Leliana of what she said, but she just.... she doesn't want Leliana to see it. The rose is her secret, the tangible proof of something lovely growing between her and Alistair, and she wants to keep it close. Leliana wouldn't do anything but coo and tease, but even that feels unbearably intrusive right now. She shoves it back into one of her bags. She hopes it was the right one. 

"A little late to be making potions, isn't it?" Leliana asks. She tries to hide a yawn, and Marian laughs.

"Go back to sleep – you're on third." Third watch means getting up three hours early and helping whoever's on breakfast duty. Thank the Maker, that's not Marian. Her cooking still hasn't improved. 

Leliana lays down again, but instead of closing her eyes and even pretending to sleep, she watches Marian getting ready for bed. She strips to her underthings and takes down her hair, raking her fingers through it to check for debris before braiding it with quick fingers. 

"Have I ever told you I really like the way you wear your hair?" Leliana says drowsily, curling up on her bedroll, pillowing her head on her hands. 

"My _hair_?" Marian barely remembers what her hair even looks like anymore, it's been that long since she saw a mirror. "No, I – thanks?" It comes out like a question. She cringes. She's totally forgotten how to take a compliment, too. Fantastic. She ties off her braid, climbs under her blanket, and shoves her toes under Cú's massive bulk. Brrr.

"It's very nice," Leliana says, yawning. "It suits you. Simple, not like the elaborate hairstyles we wore in Orlais. Flowers, ribbons, jewels..." She giggles. "One year, feathers were all the rage, and Lady Elise decided she needed to outdo everyone else, and actually wore _live songbirds_ in her hair. The chirping was quite charming for a while, but you must realize, terrified little birdies often have loose bowels."

Marian tries to picture it for a while; she knows nothing of Orlesian court fashion, so all that comes to mind is massive skirts, tight, ornamented bodices, and towering curled wigs, and those little square-heeled shoes with embroidery or jewels pasted on. "I hope she got what was coming to her," Marian says finally. She closes her eyes – Leliana won't mind. She knows Marian is still listening.

It's comforting, actually. She used to talk to Lissette like this after lights out, curled up either together or in separate beds and talking about – oh, anything they could think of. Gossip and secrets and who's tupping who, speculating on the senior enchanters' apprentice years, seeing who could come up with the most outrageous stories about Greagoir and which ones actually made a strange kind of sense. Lissette had sworn up and down that he'd had a secret liaison with a mage when he was young – but how could she know? Marian still can't imagine that.

She misses Lissette _so much_. She can't make Leliana into her replacement – that's not fair to any of the three of them – but she fits so neatly into a hole in Marian's life that it's hard work. They don't look anything like. Lissette looked like temptation personified, mouthwatering curves and wicked eyes. Leliana's softer, sweeter. That helps. 

Leliana murmurs her agreement. "You can imagine what she looked like at the end of the evening, I'm sure..." She opens her eyes wide. "But I was trying to say something nice to you!" She stares at Marian like it's her fault they got off topic. 

"Bird crap is my favorite topic of conversation, it's true," Marian says, laughing. 

" _You_ – " Leliana stops mid-sentence, sighs outrageously, and then joins Marian in her laughter. "It's just that I feel so comfortable talking to you," she says, smiling at Marian affectionately. "Like I could say anything and you wouldn't judge me."

"That's what you think," Marian says, closing her eyes. She's warm now, and comfortable. "Cú and I gossip behind your back. About all of you, actually – did you know that Wynne talks in her sleep?"

"I hope it's scandalous." Leliana's got a nice voice, and now it's rich with sleep and fond affection. It's just... it's nice. She could fall asleep to this. "I haven't felt this close to anyone in a long time. I really enjoy your company."

It takes a second, but that rings all sorts of bells in her head. Marian opens her eyes to find Leliana smiling at her, just the way she had before. Nothing's wrong, or off, of course, but Marian could have sworn... For a moment, Leliana's voice seemed to hold a particular tone she's only heard from girls who were looking for a night's company. 

She's being ridiculous, of course. Leliana's never even hinted that she's interested in Marian like that. No, Marian's imagining things. It's definitely time for sleep.

"I enjoy your company, too," she says. She doesn't have to fake a yawn; one springs itself on her as soon as she lets her guard down. She smiles at Leliana and then closes her eyes. "It's nice to have a friend again..."

She falls asleep between one yawn and the next, and if Leliana replies, Marian doesn't hear it. Perhaps that's for the best.

\---

When they've put about a mile between them and the rest of the group, Marian looks down at Cú and tells him to keep an eye on them for her. He barks once, rubs his whole body against her leg in farewell, and turns around to trot back to the others. 

Marian takes a long, deep breath. "This is nice," she says, sighing. "I like them, or, most of them, but I like space, too."

"I know what you mean. That stuff Sten wears – _phwoar_ ," Alistair says, waving his hand in front of his nose. "I don't even want to know what it is." He glances over at her curiously. "It looked like they kept you in close quarters at the Circle – aren't you used to being around people?"

"In a way, yes," Marian says, thinking back. "But we weren't in the dormitories all the time, you know. We had classes and tutorials, meals, and even some free time." She wrinkles her nose. "I spent quite a lot of that in the library," she confesses.

"You shock me," Alistair says gravely, laughing when she sticks her tongue out. 

"Even when we were in the dorm, we weren't exactly socializing." Marian slides a glance at Alistair out of the corner of her eye, and decides to take the opportunity to steer the conversation. "Though of course, there was quite a lot of bed-swapping after lights out..."

Alistair laughs. "And what else do they expect, cramming a bunch of teenagers in a room together? They used to beat the ones they caught at it at the monastery, but that never stopped anyone either."

"So..." Marian does her best to keep her voice casual. "I was wondering... have you never..." She still can't figure out how to phrase it, though, and her idea of last night – just coming out and asking him straight, _Are you a virgin?_ – seems cruel in the light of day. 

To her relief, Alistair doesn't seem angry – or defensive, which was the reaction that worried her more. "Never...?" He trails off inquisitively. He's _teasing_ her, Marian realizes with a strange mix of amusement and shock. Every so often, Alistair surprises her. She likes it. "Never what? Had a good pair of shoes?"

Marian lifts an eyebrow at him. "Really? This is where you're going with that?"

"But you could be talking about anything," he protests, grinning. "Have I never seen a basilisk? Ate jellied ham? Have I never licked a lamppost in winter?"

A lamppost, eh? Marian laughs. She hasn't heard that one before, but she'll take anything over the old and hoary standards of staff, wand, and rod. "You _know_ what I mean," she says. "And if you don't, I really question the thoroughness of your education."

He likes to make her laugh. She's noticed that before. He gets this pleased, mildly smug air about him that's not unattractive, like the one that he's wearing now.

"It's not like I could ask the sisters," he points out. "Well, tell me: have _you_ ever licked a lamppost in winter?" It's clear from the suggestive lilt in his voice that he's not talking about actual lampposts anymore. One hard shiver climbs up her spine and lodges in her brain, an electric spike of possibility. If he's all right talking about this... She looks at him; he's watching her with a grin and raised eyebrows. It seems that he is. 

Still, she can't help teasing back. "Did it _look_ like we had lampposts in the Circle?"

"We didn't check all the wardrobes or under the beds," Alistair says, laughing. "Maybe you were keeping the good stuff to yourself... No?" 

Marian rolls her eyes at him, giving that comment the silence it deserves. "I've never licked a lamppost in winter, no," she says, giving up. "But I have had quite a lot of sex."

Alistair grins at her, but she's watching closely; she doesn't miss the way his pupils dilate just a little bit. She thinks it's desire. She hopes it is. "Oh, so _that's_ what we're talking about. I admit I've never had a woman just... come out and ask me like this, that's for sure."

_It's not like you were getting around to it on your own..._

Alistair scratches at the stubble on his cheek, the only outward sign of nerves he makes. Otherwise, he may as well be talking about the weather. "I, myself, never had the pleasure. Not that I haven't thought about it, of course, but..." He shrugs. "You know."

Marian lets the silence linger, sorting out just how she feels about that. It's not a plus, not in her book, but there is something appealing about showing Alistair how fun it can be, how rewarding, how intimate. It leaves the pace of their relationship entirely up to him and what he's comfortable with, which is a drawback, but one she can live with. 

It doesn't make a blind bit of difference except that she won't be throwing herself at him until she's sure he's ready, then. All right. 

Marian looks over and realizes she's been silent too long; Alistair's gone all tight-lipped and quiet. She swears at herself and reaches out, curling her fingers around his. She wishes they weren't both wearing gloves. He looks up, startled. "I'm sorry," she says. "I wasn't thinking – well, I _was_ thinking," she corrects herself. "That's the problem."

"About what?" Alistair asks, with understandable wariness.

She squeezes his hand. "About you," she says, looking over and offering him an affectionate smile. After a moment he returns it, and she knows she's been forgiven. "Did no one ever catch your fancy?"

"No more than in passing," he says easily. "Not until... " He glances at her, looking away just as quickly. Marian smiles to herself. "And living in the Chantry is, well... not exactly a life for rambunctious boys. They taught me to be a gentleman, especially in the presence of beautiful women such as yourself. That's not so bad, is it?"

It never ceases to amaze Marian that Alistair will open his heart and soft, tender emotions to her at the drop of a hat. How can she repay this trust? What can she possibly do to deserve it?

He thinks she's beautiful. 

"I like you just the way you are," she says softly. "So no, I don't think so."

"Good. You'd... want a gentleman to court you, wouldn't you? If... if you were to be courted by someone, that is."

_Courting_? It shouldn't be a surprise to her that he's that serious about this, about them, but for some reason it is. Courting implies long-term intent. Courting is a very definite word. 

She looks at him, but he's carefully watching the road in front of them, not her. Marian tugs him to a halt by their joined hands, forcing him to look at her. "Alistair, if there's to be courting, I only want it from you." 

He touches her face, his eyes intent and so fond that she can't look away. "That's good to know," he says, a grin pulling at the side of his mouth. "I'll have to remember that."

Marian tilts her head to the side, raising her eyebrows in challenge. "And how would _you_ feel about being courted?"

Alistair laughs. "I think that would be my cue to grin a bit and look foolish for a while. Why do you ask?"

"No reason," she says, grinning. "No reason at all."


	39. The Arl

By the time they catch sight of Redcliffe Castle, far in the distance, they're all cranky and sore and so, so travel-weary. Zevran and Leliana and Morrigan have been bickering amongst themselves non-stop for the last few hours. The castle looks like heaven, even if it is another hour's walk before they reach even the path that leads up to the gates. The sun is setting, painting the walls with faded gold that makes it look appealing, romantic, like someone's painting of home. Considering what had happened there the last time she was here, that's a strange thought to have in her mind.

It's lovely, though. She can't deny that.

There are guards posted at the end of the path; Marian slows her pace when she nears them, half-afraid that they're going to tell her that Connor has reverted or that the creatures are back, but they only bow as far as their armor will allow, the bow of true respect, and tell her that Bann Teagan has been asking after them.

Their path takes them over the bridge, from which Marian can see the village. The fishing boats are all docked for the evening, but the square has been cleared of barricades; they've got a huge bonfire burning in front of the Chantry. She can smell the wood smoke from here. She can just make out figures around it, probably villagers; she hopes they're celebrating. They deserve it.

Teagan and Isolde wait for her in the main hall. They must have been spotted coming down the Imperial highway, or someone ran ahead while they were on the path to warn of their coming. Teagan is so much thinner than she remembers him that Marian is instantly concerned. He looks drawn and tired, too; Eamon's illness and Eamon's responsibilities must be weighing heavy on his shoulders. Isolde's hands are folded before her, her fingers knotted together so tightly that her knuckles are white.

Marian immediately decides to skip the pleasantries. "I found the Urn," she says, untying the leather pouch from her belt. It doesn't look like much, she knows, but more and more she can feel the virtue in the Ashes permeating the soft leather and reaching out to her. It's been sitting on her belt for four days and she's never felt healthier. Her menses ran their course in record time. She doesn't know what's in the Ashes, or what they might be, but all she can do is hope that they'll heal Eamon. They need him quite desperately.

"You have?" Teagan stands straighter, his face suddenly more alive than it had been only a second ago. She can appreciate just how run-down he'd seemed before, now that he's got a bit of hope again. There's an unbearable excitement in Isolde's eyes. This had better work; she doesn't think she could bear disappointing them. "Wonderful! Let us go at once to Eamon's side and see if the Urn's healing powers live up to their reputation!"

Only Alistair and Wynne follow her up to Eamon's room; the rest peel off to the guest quarters. It's a huge room, dominated by the towering four-poster bed where Eamon lies so still that it's hard to tell whether he's actually breathing or not. Irving is there, and from the looks of him he hasn't slept more than a few hours a night since they left for Denerim all those weeks ago.

He nods to Wynne when they come in, and then he looks at Marian. "Child, I am glad to see you," he says, his voice as ancient and weary as he is. "I have done everything in my power – and you had better believe that as First Enchanter, that phrase is not meaningless – and there has not been the slightest change in his condition. I am beginning to believe that we will need a miracle."

Marian crosses the room in two long strides and holds out the pouch. "We found the Urn of Sacred Ashes," she says, when Irving seems more likely to stare at her hand in shock rather than do anything productive.

Irving traces the Maker's Circle on his chest. "How did you find it?" he breathes; he can't tear his eyes away from the pouch still in Marian's hand. She understands the impulse, but surely the debrief can wait – this isn't the time.

"Eamon first," Marian says impatiently, gesturing to Eamon's body, lying still as death under the sheets. Wynne is examining him, prying up his eyelids to look inside, and beyond her Alistair is watching him with distress in his eyes. _Damn_. She'd forgotten how much Alistair looks up to Eamon. He shouldn't see him like this. She shouldn't have brought him. Though... she thinks he would have come anyway. He's not the malleable boy she met at Ostagar anymore.

Irving takes the little pouch, cupping it hesitantly before bowing his head over his hands and closing his eyes. When his head comes up, his eyes are faintly puzzled. "These ashes are very powerfully magical," he says. "But I have no notion how to use them to best effect."

Marian doesn't, either, so she takes over from Wynne so they can confer. The examination is pointless, telling them nothing they didn't already know, but she finishes it anyway and then waits as patiently as she's able for them to make a decision.

The important thing seems to be to get it inside of his body as quickly and efficiently as possible, so they decide to mix a suspension liquid to carry the ashes into his stomach. Teagan sends out for the ingredients and for one of the mages to bring their distillation equipment, and then it's a case of hurry up and wait while Wynne carefully brews a thick, clear potion that smells like the inside of an ogre's stomach. Committing the recipe to memory is automatic.

Wynne stirs the ashes in bit by bit, carefully watching to make sure that the ashes distribute themselves evenly instead of clumping. Then comes the lengthy ordeal of forcing it down Eamon's throat a few drops at a time; it's too dangerous and too precious to just pour in his mouth and shut his jaw. He'll choke and the potion – and the Ashes – will go everywhere.

Wynne massages his throat, encouraging him to swallow the last few drops, and then stands back from the bed and sighs. "I've done everything I can," she says. "It's up to him now, and to the Maker."

Marian stands against the wall and waits along with the rest of them, but Maker, she's so tired...

Her head jerks itself up of its own volition. She's just fallen asleep on her feet, she realizes with a dim, distant horror. She looks over at Eamon's still body, now with Isolde holding his hand, but he's still just the same. The candles haven't burned down very much. She can't have been asleep for long.

She laces her hands behind her back and presses her shoulders into the wall. She's never been very good at patiently waiting for things to happen. She's so tired and the fire keeps the room warmer than she prefers... She fast grows sleepy again; _too_ fast. She digs her nails into the soft, untried skin that covers the joints in her hands, unerringly going for the spots that cause the most pain. It wakes her for a moment, but she knows it's only a stopgap. It won't keep her awake for long.

No one seems to have noticed her problem. Wynne and Irving are talking on the other side of the room; they look calm, but they keep checking on Eamon far more often than Marian thinks warranted. The way that she understands it, there's no half-measures when it comes to the Ashes – either Eamon will be fully healed, or he'll stay exactly the same. Wynne's a worrier, though, and underneath his detachment, so is Irving – for the people he truly cares about, that is. Eamon is apparently one of them.

Alistair is still here, too, watching Eamon like a hawk. She slides over to him and presses her shoulder against his in a brief offer of support. She just wants him to know she's there. He doesn't look at her, but the concern lining his face eases a little. She'll take it.

"Don't think I didn't see you falling asleep over there," he says under his breath.

She closes her eyes and groans softly. "I was hoping I'd got away with it."

"Hard to do that when you snore."

Marian kicks him. "I do not!" And she knows that for a fact. _Awful man_. Alistair grins at her and then goes back to watching Eamon. The life and humor drains out of his face slowly, something that leaves an uneasy feeling in Marian's stomach. He's worried. To tell the truth, so is she. What if the Ashes aren't what they're claimed to be? This is already the solution of last resort. They can't afford the time required by a new idea. The Blight is coming. Lothering is _gone_. They don't have _time_ for this. But at the same time, they need Eamon to rally the Landsmeet against Loghain. This has to work. It _has_ to. There are no other options here, no one she can coax and cozen into helping. 

And beside all of that... Alistair will be crushed if this doesn't work.

She watches Eamon anxiously, willing him to wake.

\---

She's roused out of a doze by Isolde's voice, high and tight with excitement. "Eamon? Can you hear me?" Isolde is standing now, bent over Eamon's motionless body to stroke his face. Alistair's gone tense, his arm a hard pressure against hers. She leans into him to offer her wordless support.

With a brisk efficiency, Wynne takes over, shuffling Isolde to the side to watch. "Ah, he _is_ waking," Wynne says, satisfaction in her voice. She puts her hand on Eamon's forehead and closes her eyes; Marian can feel Wynne's magic like a cool breeze against her mind as she checks his body. "He's as healthy as he was before he was poisoned."

It worked. Oh, thank the Maker, it _worked_. Marian's nearly boneless with relief and exhaustion; she leans as much of her weight on Alistair as she dares. She can feel him sigh and some of the tension goes out of his body.

Not that she doesn't notice Wynne's equivocation. _As healthy as he was before_ could mean many things, but so long as Eamon isn't going to drop dead before they get Loghain off the throne, Marian figures Eamon's health is none of her business.

Eamon stirs before her eyes, his head turning on his pillow. He sighs, and then groans, the small noises of someone who doesn't want to wake up quite yet. It's strange to be watching him like this, actually; Eamon seems like a dignified man, and surely he wouldn't want people to see him vulnerable.

Eamon opens his eyes to stare at the ceiling. "Wh-" Eamon's voice is scratchy. He coughs to clear his throat and tries again. "Where am I?"

Teagan leans over the bed so Eamon can see him. The braid he wears in his hair slips out from behind his ear and dangles in front of his face. "Be calm, brother," he says, very gently. He's good in a sickroom. Some people are so prickly, or they can't sit still, but he knows how to calm the air around him and create a soothing place. "You have been deathly ill for a very long time. Do you remember nothing?"

Eamon turns his head a little and squints at Teagan. "Teagan? What are you doing here? Where is Isolde?" His voice gains in strength and worry at the same time.

Isolde leans over the bed next to Teagan, laying her hand on Eamon's cheek. Teagan leans back a bit to give them some space. "I am here, my husband," she says, close to tears. She's got a huge, relieved, shaky smile on her face. Eamon seizes her hand, bringing it to his mouth. Isolde kisses him on the forehead. Marian had thought it was some sort of arranged marriage, perhaps part of the peace after the rebellion, but... It looks like they really love each other. That's real relief, and joy, and the simple need to touch someone they love who's been denied to them. 

Eamon looks up, into Isolde's face. He's growing more _real_ every moment, filling out like he's only just now come home to his body. He's a more formidable man than Marian realized. He may have all the power in the Landsmeet that Teagan claims for him and more. "And Connor? Where is my boy? Where is our son?"

"He lives," she says immediately, the smile falling from her face. "Though many others are dead. There is much to tell you, husband." She sounds troubled at the reminder of what happened. _Good_ , Marian thinks, completely uncharitable about this. _She should be_.

"Dead?" Eamon examines Isolde's face, then Teagan's, and then looks around the room for the first time. He nods to Irving and Wynne, but stops when he looks at Marian, arrested by her face. "Then... it was not a dream?" He struggles to lift himself up onto his elbows, but Teagan is there to help while Isolde fusses over pillows.

Teagan sighs. "Much has happened since you fell ill, Brother. Some of it will not be... easy for you to hear."

"Then tell me. I wish to hear all of it."

"But first the healers must have their day," Irving says, beckoning to Wynne.

Marian and Alistair hang back against the wall during the medical examination and the lengthy tale that follows. Teagan is thorough, leaving nothing out, and Eamon's face grows darker and darker as Loghain's treachery grows, as the extent of the damage is made clear. But he does not interrupt, even when his son is revealed to be a mage, the cause of all of Redcliffe's woes, and his wife makes foolish and destructive choices.

That reminds Marian that she should check on Connor. It's not likely that she'll find anything in him that the best minds of the Circle have missed, that Irving could have missed, but she feels responsible for him. She'll check anyway.

Eamon absorbs these blows with little more than grave eyes and a thin mouth. Redcliffe village is hurting. The undead killed many, mostly on the first night in the surprise of their first attack. They haven't had time to do much more than burn the bodies.

"I seem to remember your face from my dreams," Eamon says, his eyes lighting on Marian's face. "Have we met?"

Marian pushes herself away from the wall and bows formally, her arms crossed over her chest. "I'm a Grey Warden, my lord. We haven't met..." She hesitates. She's not sure how he'll take this – _she_ wouldn't want anyone in her head but her, and she's not an arl who can scupper their chances at removing Loghain before the Blight swallows Ferelden whole. But Teagan's already alluded to her journey through Connor's Fade dreams, and she can't, in good conscience, keep it from Eamon.

But how interesting that he remembers Connor's dream...

"I'm the one who detached the demon from your son," she says. "There were... I think you were there in his dream, like a shade, trying to protect him."

"A fine job I did," Eamon says. He sounds weary already. Is this too much for him? He has just woken, after all – "What is your name?"

"I'm Marian." She looks around to find Alistair, takes his arm and pulls him closer to the bed. He trips a little over thin air. _Oops_. "And I think you know Alistair."

"Alistair?" That brings Eamon straight up as he scrutinizes every inch of Alistair's face. Alistair nods. There's relief on Eamon's face, and happiness, and... is that a hint of calculation she sees in the slightest narrowing of his eyes? Or is Marian imagining that? Eamon smiles. "It's good to see you, lad."

"You, too," Alistair says. Marian knows him well enough now to know that he's hiding deep emotion with the wry, subtle humor that's his trademark. "I'm glad you're all right."

"Yes, we're all glad to see you're back among the living, old friend," Irving says. "But I am old and weary. Perhaps we should adjourn for the night and reconvene in the morning?"

Oh, thank the Maker; Marian's so tired she could weep.

She manages to be the first out the door – Eamon caught Teagan with yet another question, and Alistair's lingering like he's not quite sure he can believe his eyes that Eamon's well again – and she gets as far as the first junction of two hallways before she hesitates, not sure which way to go. She's never been on this side of the castle before. All of the hallways look alike, grey stone hung with huge, old tapestries to keep the warmth in. The left-hand hall has a small side table, the right a long runner carpet, and there are portraits hung between the tapestries in the corridor ahead of her. Which way?

"Marian!" 

She turns – it's Alistair, of course, coming up behind her. He smiles at her. "You left in quite a hurry."

"I was falling asleep on my feet," she says, making a face. "But now I'm lost. Do you remember which way it is to our rooms?"

He laughs and turns her to the left, the hall with the little table. "This way."

They turn a corner, and then another, leading them deeper into the castle. She can only hope that Alistair really does know where he's going.

"You must remember the castle well," Marian says, when Alistair turns another corner without pause.

He glances over at her. He looks as tired as she is, but well-pleased, too. The sight of him, the idea that he might look like that after sex, gives her a little thrill that strokes her nipples from the inside. " _I_ was paying attention when Teagan brought us here, unlike some I could mention," he says with a teasing grin. "I've never been up here before. I slept in the stables when I lived here."

"Oh, shut up." She narrows her eyes, painting a frown on her face, but she can't hold it in the face of his relentless good humor. She laughs. Alistair's smirk broadens when she does, like he's won. She takes his hand again, wishing she could put her head on his shoulder and let him sleep-walk her to her room.

Her stomach grumbles resentfully. And loudly.

Alistair frowns. "Maker, did someone let a bear loose in the castle?"

She'd elbow him, but all she'd get is a bruise on both her elbow and her ego. "We didn't stop for dinner," Marian says with as much dignity as she can muster when her stomach sounds like something died in there, "and I'm _starving_ – "

As if on cue, Alistair's stomach rumbles deeper than hers, like they've agreed on a harmony. Marian laughs, and when she sees the chagrin on his face, laughs harder.

"I suppose I deserve that," Alistair says ruefully.

"That is the least of what you deserve," Marian says. They've turned another corner, and she's almost sure she knows where she is now. Her room is just there.

But as tired as she is, she's not ready to go to bed yet.

She stops, pulling on Alistair's hand until he turns to her, confused. "We're both hungry, and we know where they hide the food," Marian points out.

Alistair grins. "I like the way you think."

\---

Alistair eats an entire plate of cheese by himself. Marian wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen it with her own two eyes. Of course, she's methodically making her way through a portion that could feed three people, so she's not going to _say_ anything. She's just kind of shocked that anyone could like cheese that much. Their appetites are unbelievable. Is she feeding the blight in her blood, or the complex, magical equilibrium her body is fighting to maintain with a deadly disease? Part of it is that she's doing much more with her body than she ever did at the Circle, of course, but where does the rest go?

Alistair pushes his plate away, leans back in his chair, and laces his fingers over his stomach with a sigh of replete satisfaction. "All done?" Marian asks, hiding her smile behind an apple.

"I couldn't fit another bite," he says with faint regret. Marian makes a show of nudging her plate out of Alistair's reach and he laughs. "Territorial, I see," he says, looking at her with that fond, knowing amusement in his eyes. The last time they'd been here, she was so intent on denying her feelings that she hadn't registered his. Now she wonders how she could have missed them. 

"I take lessons from my mabari." Marian crams another bite into her mouth and swallows, grinning at him, showing all her teeth.

Alistair laughs again. "Now I'm scared. He snapped at me once for getting between him and his food. I'm more careful now, believe me." He stretches out his legs, his foot coming to rest against hers, and tips his head back. "It's such a relief that the arl's awake," he says to the ceiling. "I was afraid..."

He trails off, apparently deeply interested in the patterns above him, and Marian takes another bite of her apple while she waits to see if he'll finish. When she's chewed and swallowed with nothing else forthcoming, she decides that he's not going to continue. "For the longest time, I thought we'd gone all that way for nothing." She winces. "Not that finding the Temple of Sacred Ashes and saving Brother Genitivi are _nothing_. That's not what I meant."

Alistair rolls his head around to look at her. "Don't worry. I know what you mean," he says, amused. "It's good we could help someone. There's been precious little of that lately." 

"Loghain's next." Marian grins. "Somehow I feel much better about our chances of dealing with him."

"Me, too," Alistair says wryly. "I wonder why that might be."

They turn over their options for a little while, deciding where to go next; Orzammar wins, being the closest – not to mention that they have no idea where to start looking for the Dalish who are supposed to live in the Brecilian Forest.

Marian walks Alistair to his room and kisses him goodnight before retiring to hers. With the taste of Alistair – and cheese – on her mouth, and her relief about Eamon's recovery soothing her mind, it's remarkably easy to fall asleep.


	40. The Plan

Eamon calls them into the main hall after breakfast. Teagan and Isolde stand at his side, and they both look immeasurably better than they did the day before. Marian is sure she does, too. None of them had been at their best yesterday. Eamon watches them gravely from the little dais before the fireplace. He commands the room with only the force of his personality. Is it that this place is his, bred into his bones and blood for who knows how many generations? Or is he simply that used to being the focus of attention, the most powerful person in any room? "The situation is most troubling."

"There is no telling what Loghain will do once he learns of your recovery, brother," Teagan says, clearly concerned.

Eamon sighs. "Loghain instigates a civil war even though the darkspawn are on our very doorstep. Long I have known him. He is a sensible man, one who never desired power."

"I was _there_ when he announced he was taking control of the throne, Eamon. He is mad with ambition, I tell you."

As a bann, Teagan holds a vote in the Landsmeet. As a Guerrin, he's not without influence in his own right. And yet Loghain hadn't spared the slightest effort toward ameliorating Teagan's obvious concerns. Instead, he'd hired assassins.

"Mad indeed," Eamon agrees. "Mad enough to kill Cailan, to attempt to kill myself and destroy my lands." He almost looks like he's _mourning_ , of all things.

Though... it makes sense, once Marian gives it a little more thought. He and Loghain fought in the rebellion together. They were friends, and also friends with Maric. This must feel like a personal betrayal. Eamon closes his eyes, taking a steadying breath before opening his eyes again; Marian's pinned by them, by the grave determination that says he'll make this right, by hook or by crook. "Whatever happened to him, Loghain must be stopped. What's more, we can scarce afford to fight this war to its bitter end."

"Lothering is overrun," Marian says, pushing down the familiar pain she feels at the thought. Her family is safe. There's no other option. "The horde is spilling into the plains as we speak. We have to act as soon as possible."

The soft, fertile heart of Ferelden is as unprepared for an attack as a frightened rabbit. The damage the darkspawn are doing right now is incalculable, irreversible. _All those people..._ And not just the people, either; the very land itself is blighted, too. There are places where no animals will roam, no plants will grow, where the water tastes of disease and rot, and those places can always, always be traced back to a Blight. 

Beside her, Alistair shifts on his feet. Does he feel the way she does, that they're being derelict in their duties?

Eamon examines her with new interest. "Indeed, we have no time to wage a campaign against him. Someone must surrender if Ferelden is to have any chance at fighting the darkspawn."

"Him, then," Marian says. She glances at Alistair and he nods at her, so firmly in agreement that it steadies her. He always does. "It's to be him."

"I agree. Loghain will pay for his heinous crimes."

Marian wishes she could be so certain, so sure as Eamon sounds. But even though she's doubtful, Eamon's words carry the weight of a proclamation and they ease something inside of her. It's such a relief to have the burden off her shoulders for a moment, to have someone else making the decisions.

"Our armies must be reserved for the darkspawn, not for each other. I will spread word of Loghain's treachery, both here and against the king, but it will be but a claim made without proof. Those claims will give Loghain's allies pause, but we must combine it with a challenge Loghain cannot ignore." He pauses infinitesimally, something she wouldn't have even noticed except that Teagan turns his head a little before he catches himself. What's going on here? "We need someone with a stronger claim to the throne than Loghain's daughter, Queen Anora."

Teagan glances sharply at Eamon. "Are you referring to Alistair, brother? Are you certain?"

Alistair has a claim on the throne. Oh, Maker, she'd all but forgotten. He's just _Alistair_ to her; it doesn't matter to her who his father was. But he's a Theirin, the only one left of the blood, and many will be swayed by that alone.

Eamon could probably do it, she realizes with a distant panic she doesn't understand. He could probably set Alistair on the throne with nothing more than proof of Alistair's parentage and his own support. She looks at Alistair just as he swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat. He hadn't sounded all that enthusiastic about being a prince that day on the cliff... and just now he looks ready to flee at the slightest provocation.

Marian presses her shoulder against his for a moment. He looks down at her, and after a heart-breaking second, the panic in his eyes begins to subside. She looks back at Eamon, who is watching them with a mild interest that doesn't fool her. She'd given something away with her action, something that she isn't sure they wanted Eamon to know.

"I would not propose such a thing if we had an alternative," Eamon says, thoughtful eyes moving between Alistair and Marian. "But the unthinkable has occurred."

"You intend to put Alistair on the throne," Marian says, her throat tight.

Eamon sighs, passing a hand over his face. "Teagan and I have a claim through marriage, but we would seem opportunists, no better than Loghain. Alistair's claim is by blood."

If Eamon thinks that his guiding hand can't be seen behind Alistair's _entire life_ , then maybe he's not as recovered as Wynne thought.

"And what about me?" Alistair snaps. "Does anyone care what _I_ want?"

Marian wants to answer that, but she can't express herself as she'd prefer in front of Eamon. She cares, though. She cares very much. And if Alistair doesn't want this, then she'll find a way around it – no matter what Eamon thinks should happen.

Eamon bends a stern look on Alistair. "You have a responsibility, Alistair. Without you, Loghain wins. I would have to support him, for the sake of Ferelden. Is that what you want?"

"I... but I... " Marian can practically see Alistair wilting. His annoyance melts out of his shoulders, the stiff lines of his face softening like a chastened schoolboy. His voice is low. "No, my lord."

Marian's not comfortable with this at all. Can't Eamon see that Alistair only agreed to please him? Why can't he see what she sees? Alistair hides his dismay poorly, so poorly that Marian can only conclude that Eamon isn't looking – or that he doesn't care. "I see only one way to proceed. I will call for the Landsmeet, a gathering of all of Ferelden's nobility in the city of Denerim. There, Ferelden can decide who shall rule, one way or another. Then the business of fighting our true foe can begin." He looks at Marian. "What say you to that, Warden? I do not wish to proceed without your blessing."

Marian swallows. What can she say? She doesn't have another idea. There _is_ no other plan she can make, no other way to pry Ferelden from Loghain's hand – and they need Ferelden's armies. But she won't throw Alistair to the wolves, either, at least without making sure that it's what he really wants.

So. How to answer him as vaguely as possible?

"I agree that a Landsmeet seems to be our best option," she says carefully. Nothing about Alistair, nothing yet. Eamon notices her omission – of course he does – but it doesn't seem to faze him. If he knows what she's up to, either it doesn't upset him or he's certain that he'll prevail in the end. Probably both.

It won't be easy to pit herself against Eamon Guerrin in the political arena, but as she glances up at Alistair's face, still dismayed, she knows the attempt is worth it.

"Very well." Eamon sighs, sounding disheartened. The world is very different to him than it was when he fell ill, and Marian imagines it's not for the better. "I will send out the word." He's silent for another moment. "It will take some time to recall my forces and organize our allies," he says thoughtfully. "I would prefer to wait until that is done before calling the Landsmeet."

"And we have other allies to pursue," Marian says, glancing at Alistair.

Eamon nods. "We will need all the allies we can get if we are to defeat the darkspawn horde."

He dismisses them then. Marian bites her tongue – she _hates_ being made to feel like a schoolgirl – and follows Alistair from the hall. He lingers outside of the door, like he's not sure where he wants to go. Marian seizes the opportunity and pulls him to the right, leading him outside into the courtyard and underneath the huge, old tree that dominates the whole yard. There she lets him go and waits for him to look at her, to say something. Instead he looks up at the brilliant blue sky that burns patterns of light and shadow onto his face through the branches of the tree. He sighs, a slow breath and a heavy exhale that tell her more about how he's feeling than he probably wants her to know.

"Alistair." She touches his sleeve. "Talk to me. Please."

He's silent a moment longer, but Marian thinks it's only the silence of looking for the right words. "I just wish... "

After another minute, she realizes that he's not going to finish, that he can't say it out loud. "You wish that someone would ask you what you want?" she guesses, probing blindly for where it hurts. Alistair nods, but he'd hesitated just a little too long; she hadn't gotten it quite right, then. "You wish _Eamon_ would ask you what you want."

Oh, _Alistair_.

His emotions are written all over his face; he's struggling between the idea that his feelings are a betrayal of someone he loves, someone he looks up to, and his very real resentment over the way he's being treated. "If he'd just _ask_ ," he says, bursting from him like a torrent. "I understand that this has to happen. I hate the idea of it, but I'll do my duty." He closes his eyes then, like the sun is too bright for him, but it's too late; she'd seen the way his eyes shine brighter than they did before. She can't hold herself back anymore. She moves closer, touches his arm in sympathy. She's familiar with the way he must be feeling. It may help to talk out their problems, but it doesn't feel very good while they're doing it.

"I don't even care that he'd have to disregard me," Alistair says sadly. "I just wish he'd _ask_."

"I'm gathering you don't want to do this."

Alistair laughs, hollow and bitter. "What gave you that idea?"

Marian shrugs, trailing her fingers down Alistair's arm until she takes his hand in hers and turns it over to look at his palm. She likes his hands. "Then we'll find another way," she says, looking up into his eyes. "We have some time, some breathing space in which to think. There's got to be _something_."

His eyes soften. "Thank you," he says, and draws her in for a long, sweet kiss that leaves her smiling.

\---

A long while later, Marian goes back up to her room where Cú is still sleeping. _I swear he likes that bed more than he likes me_... She whistles and he wakes, cocking his head at her. "Want to go see Sandal?" He leaps off the bed and wags his tail furiously, making her laugh.

They'd collected a lot of valuable things off of the bodies of the dead. Marian hates the plunder, but they have to feed themselves somehow when they're not being subsidized by a friendly and grateful arl. Marian has a few things, but Alistair and Sten have more, and she collects all of it before borrowing one of the guards to help her take it down to the village, where Bodahn is waiting for them. Cú and Sandal play some sort of game that involves a lot of barking and laughter while Marian and Bodahn haggle; normally Alistair would be doing this, given that he's got a talent for it and experience where she has none, but she trusts Bodahn not to cheat her too outrageously.

"We're leaving for Orzammar in a week," Marian tells him in the end. "And we used too much of our supplies on the road; I'd be grateful if you could arrange to have them replaced at the castle."

Bodahn's hands slow on the sovereigns he's counting out, but they don't stop. "Orzammar?" he says thoughtfully. "I wasn't expecting that."

Marian frowns. "It's not a problem, is it?"

"Not..." Bodahn carefully squares a stack of five sovereigns and sighs. "Orzammar isn't going to be welcoming us home anytime soon, my boy and I. We're surfacers."

He stops, like that should mean something to her. Actually... Something teases at the furthest corners of her mind, something she'd read so long ago that it's only a memory of a memory. She can't get it to come any closer, though. The confusion must shine on her face, because Bodahn takes a deep breath and explains Orzammar, its society and structure, the rigid caste system that governs their lives and the reason he'd been expelled from it.

She doesn't have to think about how she feels about his confession – she doesn't care. Dead men don't care about their possessions. He'd been foolish, true, but that was his business and not hers. This is only a concern because – "Do you mean to say that you can't even enter Orzammar?"

Bodahn nods. "We're dead to them, so to speak. We're only fit for dirt and the sky. We'd weaken the Stone, you see." He shrugs, making two more stacks without even watching his hands. "It's a funny place, Orzammar. It's nothing like human cities."

He draws her pictures with his stories: the city in the deep carved out of stone, the flowing lava that illuminate it, the cavern roof that's only barely visible overhead. At the same time, he tells her more than she thinks he meant to. The dwarves are a society that's quickly ossifying itself into annihilation. She can't judge what their culture does to survive the never-ending, ever-present threat of darkspawn pressing up from below, but she doesn't think she'd want to live there. 

"I could use anything you can tell us about the people we may be dealing with, Bodahn," Marian says regretfully. She wishes she didn't need to ask him – she doesn't want to remind him of a place he must miss – but he's her best source of information, even if it's slightly out of date. At least she'll be able to trust that it's not skewed.

At least he doesn't seem to mind. 

Bodahn remembers quite a bit of gossip, things that were new to him when he left and are probably old news now – King Aeducan's mission to reconnect with the lost city of Kal Sharok, the name of his latest mistress, the ebbs and flows of the subtle, contentious, and never-ending maneuvering between the Houses for precedence. He tells her about the Shaperate, the keepers of the memories, and the iron hold they have on tradition and society. From there he winds on through the more prominent houses in his own merchant caste and the names of some of the more influential members of other houses, including three Proving champions, two bar owners, and King Aeducan's personal armorsmith.

It's thirsty work. She buys Bodahn a pint when he runs dry, but the stories seem to go on forever, Orzammar without end. It's deep in the evening when he starts to repeat himself; she makes her excuses and takes it slow on the way back to the castle, turning over what she's learned and fitting in the few things she'd already known from her books. Cú seems content to keep her slow pace, trotting off now and again to smell something beside the path.

Marian hopes that this trip to Orzammar won't be as _interesting_ as the rest of their journey might suggest – but she knows it's probably a forlorn hope.


	41. The Standard

Marian wakes so early the next morning that the sun has yet to rise. She groans and buries her face in her pillow, but it's no use; she can't get back to sleep. Her body is used to early hours now, and that's probably a good thing, but there's early and then there's _ridiculous_.

She lies in bed for another twenty minutes, hating herself every moment, before she accepts that it's useless and gets up.

When she arrives, she finds that the breakfast room is already occupied. Wynne looks up from a cup of tea with a welcoming smile. "You're up early." She gestures to the seat next to her, and Marian sinks into it with a sigh.

"I know," Marian groans. "I couldn't get back to sleep."

"Well, it's nice to have company." Wynne takes another sip of tea, and like that's their cue, the servants arrive to start laying out breakfast around them. It's impossible to talk over the clashing of plates and serving dishes.

When finally they're finished and the servants leave, Marian is starving. Coddled eggs, fresh, crusty bread, dried and smoked fish, porridge and oats, dried fruit – Marian takes some of everything, and hopes that her eyes aren't bigger than her stomach. Wynne takes nothing more than a little fresh baked bread drizzled with honey.

"We're leaving for Orzammar next Friday," Marian says when she's assuaged the worst of her hunger. "Is there anything you need before we leave?"

"I'll take advantage of the opportunity to send my robes to the laundry maids, then, and instruct them on what they'll need to do," Wynne says. "If you give me yours, the maids can do them all at once."

"Of course," Marian says, weighing her curiosity against her remaining hunger. "I'll go up and get them when I'm done." Hunger wins, she decides, and digs in.

Wynne finishes her tea and sets down her mug with a gentle thump against the wood table. "May I ask you a question?"

Marian looks up from her food, startled. "Of course you may."

"What does being a Grey Warden mean to you?" Wynne's eyes are sharp, knowing on hers, seeming to pierce through her brain and into her soul. This means something to her, something important.

"It's fighting the Blight," Marian says, confused. What is she getting at?

Wynne smiles a little. Marian's done a trick, it says, done it well, just as expected. There's nothing more irritating than performing exactly to someone's expectations. "There's more to being a Grey Warden than killing darkspawn and saving the world from the Blight," she says. "Ultimately, being a Grey Warden is about serving others, about serving all people, whether elves or dwarves or men."

"Yes," Marian says slowly. She doesn't quite understand what Wynne is trying to lead her to, which probably means that Wynne hasn't gotten to the point yet.

"As a Grey Warden you are a guardian of men. And you guard them because their continued existence is more important than you are." Wynne tilts the teapot toward Marian, offering her some, but Marian shakes her head, refusing the tea and still lost. "Thus it is you who serves, not they."

She fills her own teacup while Marian thinks. As a concept it seems fairly self-evident, though Wynne must have a reason for bringing it up. "I don't understand what you're getting at," Marian is forced to admit. "We protect, yes, and we serve Thedas in that sense, but – "

Wynne stops her by gently laying her hand over Marian's. She can count the number of times Wynne has touched her on one hand and have plenty of fingers left over. It stops her mouth in its tracks. "A good king – a _true_ king, who cares for his land – uses his power to rule firmly but fairly. He serves his people first and foremost. The king who does not do this, who believes that he is entitled to his power, who abuses it and uses it for his own means, is a tyrant." It pours from Wynne in a passionate speech, something she believes, and believes strongly. And Marian even agrees with her – but what does it have to do with her? Or being a Grey Warden? She doesn't truly have that kind of power, no matter what Wynne says. Yes, Grey Wardens are charged with stopping the Blight by any means necessary, with all the rights and responsibilities that implies. If a village is raided by darkspawn, the Grey Wardens are the ones to determine whether it must be burnt to the ground, and whether the villagers must be put to the sword. Theirs is a very real power over life and death – in a kingdom that acknowledges that power. Here in Ferelden, Loghain has taken that from them, along with everything else.

"We're not so powerful as you think," Marian says, with a small, sad smile. "We're sorry excuses for Wardens, really."

Wynne examines her with those cool eyes that see too much. "You are much changed from who you were," she says. "And I do not think you realize it." She sighs, and starts again, in that voice that Marian has heard aimed at other apprentices but never at her. It says _Keep up, apprentice_. "If you live apart from others, and your actions affect only you, then you may do as you wish. But if you have power, influence and strength, your every action will be as a drop of water in a clear still pond. The drop causes ripples, and ripples spread." Wynne spreads her hands further and further apart, until she's at arm's length. "Think of how far they will go, how wide they will become. How will they affect the pond?" She falls silent, searching Marian's face – for understanding?

She understands the concept. It's not a difficult one. What she's having trouble grasping is the reason that she needs to hear it. Is this... Oh, Maker, is this about her and Alistair? Or maybe Wynne heard the essence of Eamon's plan. Is this meant for Alistair's ears? But no, Wynne isn't subtle in that way – if she had something to say to Alistair, she'd say it to his face.

This is meant for her, then. Is this some sort of oblique warning that she's throwing her authority around too much? Is this about their side trip to Haven? But Wynne hadn't said a word about it – and Wynne is one of the people she would have pegged as thoroughly behind the idea.

Maybe Marian's demon encounter worried Wynne more than she let on.

Or maybe she's trying too hard to divine Wynne's reasoning when she should just ask.

Wynne's got her teacup in front of her mouth as she drinks, trying to hide her smile, but Marian can still see the amusement in her eyes as she watches Marian spin her wheels. Maybe that was her intention all along. Or... Or maybe Marian needs to stop this before she goes insane. _More_ insane. Wynne sets her cup in its saucer with a tiny, genteel clink. "But I've lectured enough for today. I should stop before I wear out my welcome."

"You couldn't possibly," Marian says automatically. It's usually true, but right now Marian could use a little less enigmatic moralizing and a little more plain speaking.

"Now, why don't I believe that?" Wynne asks, watching Marian with shrewd eyes, but when Marian winces, she laughs and waves it off. She leaves Marian alone with her thoughts, and with the breakfast that's been laid. Her stomach rumbles.

With an appetite like this, she's surprised the Wardens haven't eaten the whole of Thedas by now. She doesn't remember Duncan eating quite so much – maybe this won't last. Hopefully.

She's halfway through a second plate and a fresh cup of tea when Alistair comes through the door and heads straight for the sideboard. His eyes are slits in his face, and his hair is flat on one side and sticking straight up on the other. "Morning," she says, amused.

He grunts at her. She laughs and watches him collect a truly astonishing amount of food, and then he sits next to her in Wynne's abandoned chair and starts to eat with single-minded precision. Had she looked like that when she came in? His stubble is threatening to become an actual beard – he hasn't shaved yet this morning, then. "What are your plans for this morning?" She turns to sit sideways in her chair, to face him.

"Training with the knights," he says, his voice a deep, scratchy rumble in his chest. Then he goes still when she touches his cheek, rubs her fingers against the stiff hairs on his face; she trails her fingers up to the soft skin stretching over his temple, savoring the contrast. He's got a few smile lines already, even though he's not much older than she is. She likes them. They say _Here's a man who doesn't take himself seriously._ She pushes her hand into his hair. It's softer than she thought.

He's so still, watching her out of the corner of her eye like he's afraid to move. Has she overstepped? "Is it all right that I touch you like this?" she asks, her nerves running high. She doesn't want him to say no, because she doesn't want to stop – and she wants him to take the same kind of pleasure in this that she does.

"Yes," he says instantly. "I – " He swallows. "I like it." _Thank the Maker._ He's silent for a moment while she tries to flatten his hair. He must have slept on it all night for it to be this stubborn. "Can I touch you like this?"

"I wish you would," she says. She pitches it low, something private between the two of them. "You have good hands." He glances at her then, startled, and she grins at him. Even as the smile's forming on his face, she takes his chin and turns him closer to her, kissing him hard. His reflexes are excellent – he kisses her back, his hand coming to rest on her knee for balance as he leans in, trying to get closer. Warmth curls in her stomach. She wants to open her mouth, to see if he knows what to do with his tongue... but he has things to do, places to be, and so does she.

She pulls away, not without a pang of regret. His eyes are wide awake now. "Good morning," she murmurs, dropping another kiss on his forehead as she stands with her tea. "Your hair is an astounding mess."

Marian walks out the door, and when she glances at him over her shoulder, he's attempting to flatten his hair without success. She laughs and leaves him to it.

\---

Genitivi isn't in his room, nor does Wynne know where he is. Either he'd risen earlier than either of them or he'd had someone bring him breakfast in his room. Marian wanders the castle looking for him; she finds Leliana in Isolde's solar, Sten working out in the courtyard where Ser Perth waits for Alistair, and Zevran charming the kitchen maids, but Genitivi eludes her until she thinks to check Eamon's study.

Genitivi looks up from the desk, his welcoming smile shining. "Warden! Come in, please."

She salutes him with the teacup that's still in her hand. She's warmed the tea in it twice over while she looked for him. There are a few good sides to being a mage. "It's just Marian," she says.

She's loved this room from the first time she saw it. There hadn't been any undead haunting this room in particular, and that helps, but even better is the atmosphere. Books have their own smell, one that matures as they age; here it's soaked into the furnishings, the carpet, the very walls.

That and a cup of tea is all she needs out of life.

Genitivi sits back in the chair behind Eamon's desk. "Were you looking for me, or something to read?"

Marian grins. "You've written a library of your own – can't it be both?" He laughs, as she'd intended, and she goes on. "Actually, I wanted to see how you were."

"As well as can be expected," Genitivi says wryly. "Enchanter Wynne is very skilled, but I laid there for too long for magical healing to be effective, she tells me. That means I have to do it the old-fashioned way, and there's no guarantee I'll keep the foot."

Concerned, Marian rounds the desk. "May I take a look?"

"It's nothing you haven't seen before," Genitivi says, raising his eyebrows. "Though I'm not sure why you'd want to..." Nonetheless, he pushes the chair away from the desk, the legs rasping against carpet as it moves. He offers her his foot. The bandages are clean; either his wounds have stopped oozing or Wynne has already seen to his wounds. She unwraps them quickly, but when she gets down to the skin she freezes. His largest toe is black down to the joint, and the rest of his toes are affected, too, to various degrees. Marian sucks in a startled breath.

"Yes," Genitivi says. Marian looks up to find him examining his toes with dispassionate interest. "If I'm not strong enough to take the toes off soon, it'll spread to my foot, and then I'll really be buggered."

She laughs at that, to her horror; her hands fly up to cover her mouth, but it's too late, it's already out. "That shouldn't be funny," she says, muffled behind her hands.

Genitivi grins at her, somehow triumphant. "Then you ought not laugh." His amusement fades into resignation as he looks back at the ruins of his foot. "There's not much to be done, I'm afraid," he says, pulling his foot back to him. Marian stops him with a touch. His skin is burning with hectic heat, growing hotter closer to his toes.

"I brought the pouch in which I had the Ashes," Marian says, digging in her pocket. "I thought you might like to see it. But I also noticed something this morning..." Finally she catches the edge of the strap and brings it out. "I think there was a tear in the paper."

Marian opens the pouch and shows it to him. The leather is old and so soft, and caught in the rough nap of the grain side is a precious few flakes of ash.

"I don't know if this much can even do anything," she says quietly. "Eamon was healed entire, but we gave him quite a bit more than what's here."

Genitivi takes the pouch from her, slowly, reverence in his every move. His hands are shaking. "Am I worthy?" he asks, speaking more to himself than to her. "I don't know that I am. I don't know how I can know that."

"If not you, then who?" He shakes his head at that, abstracted, like he's not really paying attention. Marian chooses her words carefully, chooses the brutal truth to slap at him. "You're going to lose your foot if you don't do something quickly. You'll walk with a crutch for the rest of your life. Your journeys will be over; you'll watch the world go by from your chair by the window, and wonder how they could have forgotten you so quickly." Genitivi pales more and more with every word until he's white.

But though she's hurt him and hurt him deeply, still he shakes his head. "If my fear ruled me, I would be even less of the man who would be worthy of this gift," he says. Genitivi hasn't looked at her since he took the pouch. He can't seem to take his eyes away from it. "I'm an old man. Maybe it's time for me to retire." His mouth firms. "No. There are others who need this more than I do."

And he tries to give it back to her then. Marian's having none of it; she stands, backing away and shaking her head.

"I won't take that from you," she says. "You're the only one I trust with the location of the Temple of Sacred Ashes. If you think you're not worthy, what do you think some of your more venal sisters and brothers will do with Andraste's ashes? And don't try to tell me they don't exist!"

Genitivi closes his mouth with an audible snap. He'd clearly been about to do just that. "I clearly have more faith in my fellow Chantry members than you," he says. He's angry. She hates that she's pushing him like this, but every word she's spoken is both the truth and a reason to her... and she can't bear the idea that someone she respects so much is martyring himself because of some impossible standard.

"I have faith in _your_ integrity," Marian says quietly. "There aren't many like you and the Chantry needs each and every one. You do so much good in the world. Don't you think you have a responsibility to keep doing it?"

She leaves him there, staring after her, the little pouch held tight in his hand. She'll send Wynne to him. It'll be his choice whether he uses the Ashes, his and none of hers. She's not certain he'll do it, though she wishes he would. She doesn't like things so much that they're worth more than a person's well-being to her, even if that thing is supposedly the ashes of humanity's greatest prophet.


	42. The Calm

Seething with an unpleasant mix of shame, frustration, and self-righteous anger, Marian is in no fit state for dealing with people. She wanders the hallways, discontent and finding fault with everything, hiding from the people she knows and ignoring the ones she doesn't.

_This is juvenile and unattractive_ , she tells herself, but it doesn't seem to help. Instead she finds the stairs to the battlements atop the castle's retaining walls. Guards stand at regular intervals, keeping watch over the approaches, but after a quick glance, they pay her no more mind than she does them. For a long while she's content to stand just at the edge with her eyes closed. The stiff, wet wind tugs her hair out of its tie, chills her skin and cools her blood. She takes a deep, deep breath, one that smells of fish and pine and straw dust from the training dummies in the courtyard behind her...

... and then she breathes it out again, the scents of Redcliffe, her guilt and shame, her worries and fears, and even the anticipation of seeing Alistair later, of leaving Redcliffe and getting back on the road. She lets them all go. They're not relevant here. She lets her emotions run out of her like water, leaving her empty. She can't keep this up for long, she knows, for right now she's a conveniently demon-shaped hole waiting to be filled. But she needs this. She needs the peace that wide-open space can bring.

Marian opens her eyes.

There's such a spectacular view from up here. The village spreads out below her; from this height the people look like dolls, moving around, just going about their lives. The height gives her a feeling of distance, of remoteness, that suits her mood. She watches them crossing here and there with idle, disinterested curiosity for a long while before she shakes her head and looks at the lake. It's a frosty grey, reflecting the scudding clouds above, blown by a harsh wind that she can't feel. The water spreads out to the north all the way to the horizon. Normally there are small fishing boats out, even at this hour, but they must know something that she doesn't regarding the weather. She wonders whether she ought to go in... and then rejects the thought. So long as she's not being hailed on, she'd much rather stay outside.

She closes the empty place in her mind after a while, but she stays where she is, looking out over the lake like it's got the answer to all her problems. The lake takes her like that, sometimes. It'd been the thing that surrounded the Tower, the thing that kept them separate from the rest of the world, and to her the lake is a confused tangle of resentful bitterness and yearning for life outside of the Circle. But she could never seem to shake the joy she'd felt the first time she saw it, the little delighted breath she took at the way it stretches out so far, inviting her over that horizon to see what lies beyond.

She sighs. She feels better, cleaner, but she doesn't want to go in yet. She wanders the battlements, counting her steps, nodding to the few guards who greet her. Most of them have their eyes on their duty instead of her, which she prefers.

In the corner where two walls meet, there's a square bastion that Morrigan has claimed as her own. She's pitched her tent here. It's strange to think of Morrigan out here, all alone, but Marian is sure that she prefers it that way.

Now that she thinks about it properly, Morrigan has to hate it here. She's not used to people, to towns, to buildings like the castle, which press down on the soul no matter how spacious it might be. She's easier out in the world, and better yet in the woods and forests that are the closest she can get to her home in the Wilds.

Morrigan is sitting in front of her tent, her legs crossed. She's making tiny stitches in one of her boots. "Warden," Morrigan says, greeting her without looking up.

Marian sighs and settles in front of Morrigan, drawing her knees up to her chest. " _Warden_? I have a name, you know."

Morrigan ignores her splendidly. It's probably time to resign herself to never having a name around certain people. "Did you wish something of me?"

"Only to get away," Marian says with a dismissive shrug. Morrigan pins her with one disbelieving glance, golden eyes cool, before returning to her boot. Marian sighs. "I was in a foul mood, if you must know."

"And where is your fellow Warden?" Morrigan might as well have asked _Where is your pickled slug?_ If only they'd stop _picking_ at each other –

Marian sighs again. _May as well wish for the moon_ , she tells herself. "He's training with the knights," she answers, waving her hand toward the courtyard. "Down there."

Morrigan glances at her again. "So you came to me instead?"

Marian opens her mouth, ready to tell her that she'd had no intention of _coming_ to her, but – she could have gone anywhere else, down the village or out into the gardens, which have nothing to show off in Cloudreach. She'd found Morrigan up here once before, and subconsciously she may have been hoping to find her again.

Why, then? Marian picks her way through her own feelings. "I suppose I thought Alistair would try to make me feel better," she admits, not without some resentment. "You'll tell me to get over myself and do something about it."

Morrigan laughs. "You may be correct," she says, still amused. She sets a locking stitch into the neat line of stitches she's sewn into her boot, ties a strong knot and bites off the thread. It's a complicated mass of leather, straps, and buckles that Morrigan puts on quickly, with the ease of long practice.

"There," she says with satisfaction. She stands, stomping her foot down into her boot once, and smiles. "Now, I may have a solution."

"You don't even know the problem," Marian objects.

"Do I not?" Morrigan leans in toward Marian a little, speaks lower like she's confiding something. "Catch if catch can," she says, then twists away with a laugh – and then that twist continues, spinning her body in impossible directions, out into thin air and back again. She reforms into a crow and leaves Marian behind with one strong flap of her wings.

Marian laughs, incredulous. "So it's like that, is it?" she shouts after Morrigan, then reaches for the place in her mind where her robin lives. A robin's no match for a crow, not in speed or anything else, but it's impossible not to take up this challenge.

With the bird in the front of her mind, Marian starts to open herself to it – then notices one of the guards staring at her in horror. She shrugs and lets the robin take her, rides through the nausea as her form dissolves and reshapes itself into something new, and when she opens her eyes again the world is quite different.

Taking off from here isn't as easy as Morrigan made it look. Marian grumbles to herself as she works at it, pitting herself against the strong, wet southern wind blowing in from the lake that dampens her feathers. Morrigan is as fearless in flying as she is everywhere else, setting a brutal pace that demands all of Marian's strength in keeping up until Morrigan folds back her wings and dives.

Morrigan was right. As a bird, her emotions are – not gone, but different, muted and flickering like candlelight, easily dismissed in favor of the wind, the speed of their descent, the absolute freedom her wings grant her. Morrigan turns out of the dive smooth as silk, and Marian follows; they end up flying one above the other, like Morrigan's her silent, unnaturally large shadow.

She gives her troubles to the wind, letting them blow away, and darts down to tag Morrigan from above.

From there, they end up playing follow-the-leader for hours. Morrigan teaches her all sorts of tricks for flying in conditions like these, and even for skimming the short, choppy waves stirred up by the wind. Marian's wet all over by the time they're done, lake water dripping from the edges of her feathers, and she's tempted to shake like Cú when they land on the edge of the battlements. Morrigan just rustles her feathers a little to shake the water off, though, so Marian follows suit. It helps.

Morrigan changes back and cocks an expectant eyebrow at Marian. She's not ready to be herself again, though, so she flies a circle around Morrigan's head and leaves her with a fragment of birdsong.

But where to go now?

She crosses into the courtyard, swooping low down to the ground and flapping madly to regain some height before she runs into anything. The courtyard is empty, and the main doors are closed, so she circles around to the garden and plays in the bushes and flowers. She invents little games, she sings half-remembered skipping songs she'd taught Bethy once upon a time, she tries to write her name with birdprints in the soil...

It's been a long time since she's been this childish.

She's tired now, though, and sore right through to her bones after the unaccustomed exercise Morrigan put her through. She turns herself back to human, suffering through the nauseous twisting, takes a deep breath, and stands to go in.

\---

Oh, Maker, she's late for dinner. She flies up to her room and stops dead when she realizes that the laundry maids have her Circle robes, which are the only thing she has that's even close to dressing for dinner.

Well, Isolde will just have to be satisfied with her Warden uniform, Marian thinks grimly, shoving herself into the leather trousers with indecent haste. Alistair wears his every night.

She's had enough practice to be quick at this by now, but even that means that she's half an hour late for dinner by the time she takes the stairs two at a time back down to the main floor and tiptoes into the main hall, hoping she can slip into a chair without everyone noticing.

Of course that means that she comes in during a lull in the conversation and everyone turns to look at her. Of _course_.

"Warden," Isolde says, toasting Marian with a glass of wine that's already half-empty. There's a smile on her face, the lingering traces of the laughter she'd heard coming down the stairs. "We were wondering where you were."

Wynne turns a disapproving look on Marian, and so does Irving, occupying the place of honor by Eamon's left hand. There are only two open seats left, one at the near end between Zevran and Wynne, and one next to Sten on the opposite corner. Zevran tilts his head at the empty chair next to him, smiling a faint little smile that absolutely reeks of smug superiority.

That makes her decision for her.

"Cruel woman," Zevran murmurs as she strides behind him, heading for the other empty seat. Marian ignores him. He needs his ego shrunk for him. She brushes her hand against Alistair's back on her way, soft and quick like it's an accident, but she catches his smile out of the corner of her eye as she settles into a seat on the bench next to a stocky, well-dressed man she doesn't know. Her neighbor resolutely ignores her, intent on impressing Bann Teagan with his efforts; she gathers that he's the new seneschal or quartermaster, and that Teagan had recommended him for the post. 

Sten nods to her. "Warden."

Marian is going to forget her own name at this rate.

Sten's at her left, at the end of the table, and across from her sits the new Mother who oversees Redcliffe Castle's tiny Chantry, Mother Elyse. The table is wide, though, and difficult to speak across, so her conversational options are Sten and the seneschal.

Marian turns to Sten. "How have you enjoyed the castle?" she asks. But oh, the _look_ he gives her – Marian sighs. She probably should have known better than to try small talk with Sten. She resigns herself to a very quiet dinner.

The servants bring dinner to them; on the other side of the table, Mother Elyse and Ser Perth are talking about religious theory, and Ser Perth turns out to be remarkably well versed in it. Marian can just follow the conversation through a comparison of Chantry services before the Orlesian occupation to Mother Elyse's first service two days previous. From there they backtrack to the Exalted Age, bemoaning the Divine Rosamund's decision to abolish high Chantry services for lack of enough classically trained singers to do justice to the Chant.

Marian's distracted from the conversation by movement to her left; she looks over to catch Sten rolling his eyes. She looks at him, her eyebrows a silent question, but he ignores her.

When she turns back to the only conversation she can actually make out, they're talking about Redcliffe's last harvest and whether they'll be able to get anything planted this year, with the Blight spreading through their fields. Only then does Mother Elyse seem to remember who's at dinner with them and turns the conversation aside.

No one wants to talk about the Blight with a Grey Warden. She'd call it strange, but she understands. Wardens are charged with doing something about it. What if they're made to feel like they're not doing enough? And Warden methods can admittedly be extreme to the uninitiated. No one wants to be told that their fields must be fired and salted so that nothing will grow for years, or that their husband or mother or children are lost to them.

"The Maker will provide," Mother Elyse says placidly, refilling Ser Perth's wineglass.

Sten snorts. Marian is only startled because she hadn't thought he was paying attention to the conversation anymore. Mother Elyse narrows her eyes, obviously offended; she opens her mouth to upbraid Sten, who spares her one disinterested glance before he goes back to his dinner. She purses her mouth and turns away in her seat to give Sten her shoulder.

The pointed snub doesn't faze him in the least. And why should it? Marian sighs. "Very diplomatic," she says to him.

He gives her the same disinterested glance he'd used to such effect on Mother Elyse, but she's become inured to it by now – he tries it on her every time she asks him anything about himself or about the qunari. "If she is the example of the keepers of human wisdom, your behavior makes much more sense to me now."

Marian frowns and starts to ask him what exactly he means by that, but after a glance across the table, she closes her mouth instead. She doesn't want to start the fourth Exalted March against the qunari at the dinner table. Her end is therefore quiet, more interested in their plates than talking to each other, but there's a good deal of laughter and conversation from the middle with Isolde and Eamon, and Leliana and Zevran look like they're getting along nicely now.

Marian makes her escape as soon as it's polite, rising immediately after Isolde signals for the plates to be cleared. Cú is waiting for her in her room, and it's only then that Marian guiltily realizes that he's been up here by himself all day, so she turns right back around and takes him outside into the twilight and lets him romp.

She realizes she's been suckered when he doesn't relieve himself, but by that time she's losing at tug o' war and it hardly seems important. When finally he gets serious about it, Cú rips the rope right out of her hands. She's braced so hard against the pull that when it stops so abruptly the force sends her onto her ass in the dirt, and she just sits there and laughs. He bounces around her in a circle, shaking his head and the rope triumphantly. "You are a tricksy beast, aren't you," she says to him.

He drops the soggy rope into her lap and cocks his head expectantly.

"Absolutely not," she tells him, shoving it off. "I'll throw something for you, but not that, it's revolting."

He scouts around for a little while and finds her a stick – from the smoothness of the handle, it's probably a bit of broom handle or something like that – and it only strikes her after she throws it the first time that he's got her very well trained.

She's not sure what makes her turn around to look at the door behind her, but she does. Alistair is leaning against the doorjamb, watching them.

"Are you just going to stand there?" she asks him.

Alistair makes a show of thinking about it. "I think so, yes." He grins at her. "I'm enjoying the view."

Marian rolls her eyes at him, though she's not displeased, and throws the stick again. Cú likes it when she banks it off things to make it change direction suddenly. It's entertaining to watch him scramble to follow the stick. He still catches it in the air every time, but at least now she's making him work for it.

She offers Alistair the stick. "Want a go?"

He approaches her and takes the stick, weighing it in his hand before flinging it hard end over end, spinning away into the darkness. Cú barks and tears off after it. Marian watches them disappear into the gloom, much further than any of her efforts.

"Show-off," she accuses him.

Alistair grins at her. "I have to impress you _somehow_ ," he says. "You don't seem to give a fig about the royal bastard thing."

Marian laughs. "So you thought muscles might do it instead?" She runs a thoughtful eye down Alistair's body, from head to toe. His uniform does fantastic things for him, but she can't help but picture the flickering glance she'd gotten of him naked in the Temple of Sacred Ashes, the long, lean lines of his side, his strong thigh, the way the muscles in his back flexed as he turned. She wants to put her hands on him so badly... She swallows. "It might, at that," she says, her mouth dry.

He ducks his head and kisses her, very softly, sweetly, drawing an answering sweetness out of her heart. She loves the way he touches her, like she's something precious and wanted. She's never had this kind of relationship before, nor ever taken so long to get into bed with someone, but Alistair is proving worth all the frustrated, sleepless nights.

Alistair studies her face. "Sometimes you look at me like... " Marian raises her eyebrows in silent, inquisitive interest which causes him to flush a little, for some reason. His voice drops. "Like you're hungry."

Ah. It's nice to know that he's not totally oblivious, but... "Does that bother you?" she asks carefully.

"If I thought you only liked me for my body, it would," he says, a familiar note of wry self-deprecation coming into his voice. "I'm not a side of beef."

Oh, she _hates_ it when he talks about himself like that, like he's not confident in himself, like he doesn't see the person that he is. "I'm sexually attracted to your mind, too, if that helps," she says, giving him her best bedroom eyes. He laughs, as she'd hoped. She puts levity aside for seriousness. "I've never felt like this, Alistair. About _anyone_." 

She touches his cheek, cupping his face in her hand; her heart flips over when he turns his cheek into her palm. There's a smug, satisfied little smile on his face that he's trying to hide. Let Alistair think he's tricked her into confessing something, if he likes; he doesn't need to know that she'd give him the world on a plate and her heart along with it, if only he asked.

She slides her arms around his neck and pushes closer, kisses him a little harder, takes a handful of his hair in her hand and holds him for her seeking mouth. He moans, and again, louder, when she tugs on his hair and kisses her hungrily.

Oh, _really_.

Marian smiles against his mouth. _I am going to enjoy figuring you out so much. I promise you'll enjoy it, too_.

Oh, she loves kissing Alistair. He doesn't really know what he's doing yet, but his mouth is so soft and tastes so good and he takes direction so well... It's easy to lose track of time with him.

And then Cú shoves his face between them to separate them, pushing Marian a step away, and proffers the stick again with a hopeful expression.

Alistair laughs ruefully. "I think I've got competition."

Marian takes the stick and flings it into the darkness, lit only by flickering fireflies, so she can show Alistair just how wrong he is.


	43. The Storm

Yesterday's threatening storm has come today, pounding the sides of the castle with sheets of rain. It wakes Marian out of a dead sleep. In fact, the sudden slap of it, the overwhelming _noise_ nearly gives her a heart attack, if she must be honest. It sits her right up in bed.

A moment's listening tells her that it's nothing in the chamber with her, or even inside the castle, and that gives her the chance to remember the wet the wind left on her feathers yesterday, the grey and the gloom, and the fishermen who'd gone home early. It must be a spectacular storm. The Circle suffered the same sorts of weather in Cloudreach, but never the sheer force of wind that she can hear throwing rain at the outer wall.

Marian sticks her head out into the hall. It's early, too early to be awake, but half-dressed servants carrying candles are going into all the outer rooms. "Not to worry, miss," one of the maids says to her as she passes. "It's only a storm. We're just closing up the shutters."

"Wake me if it's actually a giant," Marian tells her, yawning. She falls back to sleep faster than she expected considering the storm, with Cú tucked up behind the crook of her knees.

\---

She wakes again later – it's impossible to tell how much later – and rolls over instead of getting up, dislodging the heavy mabari who's using her as a heat source. She stares at the grey stone of the ceiling, though she's not really seeing it. Several things have been worrying at her all night, occupying her thoughts and threading through her dreams, and the one she's willing to think about right now is something about Sten. Last night at dinner... he's never hidden his contempt of humans and their practices, but he's never volunteered anything like that, either. It's difficult enough to get him to answer a simple and practical question like _what kind of armor do you wear?_ And volunteering an opinion, without her prompting? Is he ill?

She wants to know what he meant by it, though, and she'll never know if she doesn't ask. She'll probably never know, period, because Sten never answers her questions; but that doesn't mean she should stop asking. That's practically heresy.

The castle is stuffed to the gills with people today, trapped inside while the storm rages outside. Marian spots the edge of Wynne's robes vanishing into the study that Genitivi has made his home and passes Morrigan in the front hall, who is frowning so fiercely that Marian snaps her mouth shut on her greeting.

It's not smart to prod the tiger, after all, not when she's so handy with a horror spell.

Alistair's playing hazard with Zevran and two of the knights, which she counts as foolishness, if only because Zevran is the kind of man who plays with weighted dice. Marian shrugs and goes on her way, hunting Sten upstairs and down; she looks nearly everywhere before she finds him sequestered in Isolde's solar. It's literally the last place she would have thought to find him. She's only being thorough when she puts her head through the doorway to the solar, but there he is in one of Isolde's delicate Orlesian chairs, reading a book.

_Huh_.

The solar is a beautiful, warm, rich room with only a few chairs and a table. There's a huge window on one wall, one with a wealth of real glass panes, that must light up the room when the weather's fine. The shutters are drawn today, of course. Sten has lit torches on the wall instead. 

"Good morning," Marian greets him cheerfully, settling into a chair. She discovers too late that it's the kind of chair that won't allow you to sit any way except with the most proper of postures. She shifts her weight forward onto her thighs and sighs a little. Of _course_ Isolde decorates like this.

Sten raises his eyebrows at her, his eyes cool, and glances deliberately at the shuttered windows; the wind is howling like a banshee outside. It sounds like there might be some hail mixed in to the rain now. The storm is getting worse. 

And then he returns to his reading like she's not there.

She's impressed, despite herself. She'd never have imagined that someone could call her foolish and absurd without a word. Unfortunately for Sten, she's also stubborn and curious.

"Good book, that?" she asks.

Sten raises the book so that she can read the title on its spine. _The History and Social Influence of the Potato, by RN Salaman_ , it says. 

So she's less interesting than the history of the potato. "You could crush a girl's ego that way," Marian says lightly. He shakes his head, returns the book to its original position, and keeps reading – and from the way his eyes are moving, she's sure he's really reading, which is sort of humbling. Marian can only speak a few scattered words of Tevene and the really naughty Orlesian swearing Lissette taught her. The largest renaissance of magical scholarship in three hundred years is happening in Orlais. There are entire libraries in the Orlesian Empire that are out of her reach because she doesn't speak the fucking language. And it's _infuriating_.

To the point, then. Perhaps he'll respond to that. "You said something at dinner last night I wanted to ask you about."

Wonder of wonders, Sten actually puts the book down to look at her. "Speak, then."

"What did you mean about human wisdom?"

He snorts. "Perhaps if humans sought wisdom beyond the walls of Chantries, they might find it now and then." 

It seems silly and defensive to point out that everything _she_ knows, she learnt from books, so Marian bites her tongue and waits for the urge to pass before she replies. "Then where ought we look for wisdom?"

From the look on his face, Marian thinks she's surprised him. What did he think she was going to say? Probably nothing flattering. His opinion of her stings a little, based as it is on little more than her race and his opinion of her leadership abilities. Though if she's honest, it's one she shares...

Sten puts his book down. Marian looks up, a little startled at this indication that he's actually going to talk to her instead of using his every effort to ignore her. 

"You could try actually _looking_ for it," he says, his eyebrows raised. "Wisdom is like breath. You need it, but no other can give you theirs."

It makes her think of her meditations. They're going well, and she's been feeling better, more stable and centered. That's probably not what he means, but maybe he has a point. "How do you find it, then?" she asks curiously.

Is that _respect_ in his eyes? No, she must be seeing things. What she's _not_ imagining is that his voice is lacking the sarcastic, dry undertone that his words normally carry. She has the feeling that he's letting her see something true for the first time. "It's everywhere," he says. "In every moment of eternity there is a chance to find it. You have only to reach for it."

"You make it sound like there's only one wisdom to be found." That can't be, unless – Maybe he defines wisdom differently than she does. Sten's Common is excellent, but that doesn't help if it's the concept behind the word that's mistranslating instead of the word itself.

Sten shakes his head and picks up his book again. "There is little point in pursuing this." It doesn't sound like he's dismissing her out of hand, at least, but like he thinks that they're never going to agree. 

She doesn't need to agree, only to understand. But if he doesn't want to talk about it anymore, she can't exactly force him.

"I don't think that's true," Marian says, watching him intently. "But if that's the case, I'll leave you to your reading." She gets up, stretching a little. For all those sorts of chairs force her to sit properly, they always leave her back aching. She laughs. "I hope you enjoy your book."

Sten levies the most unimpressed look on her that she's ever had the pleasure of seeing. She grins at him and strolls out of the door. 

When she's out in the hall, she lets the amusement slide off her face like it never was. Philosophy is the last thing she expected from Sten. That means she doesn't understand him yet, and that's something she can and should fix.

As always, her first impulse is research. 

She can probably get something from Eamon's shelves. Didn't he have _A Compiled History of the Occupied North_? It's probably too much to hope for _the Truth of the_ Qun, though. And of course, there's Genitivi's collected works... Marian checks her steps when she remembers that Genitivi is probably in Eamon's study. It takes a minute of convincing herself that she's probably made too much of their disagreement before she can make herself go in.

Genitivi is indeed there, lounging in Eamon's desk chair, but so are Wynne, Irving, and of all people, Leliana. Leliana's in the middle of telling a story, all flashing hands and bright smiles, but her smile turns warmer when she sees Marian hovering at the door. "Marian!"

"Don't mind me," Marian says instantly, pasting a smile on her face, sidling in and edging her way toward the bookshelves. "Really..."

Leliana laughs at her with only her eyes, but she goes back to her story, and it's only a moment before the others turn back to her and listen. Marian's tempted to listen, too; Leilana's got an engaging way about her with a story, and this, the tale of the Black Fox's year of mischief against the lord of Val Chevin, is one of her favorites. 

She manages to drag herself away, but not before Leliana introduces wicked, wicked Clotildé. Clotildé's her _favorite_. It's not often that a woman in a storytale uses her mind to outwit and outthink and outplan all of her opponents.

Now, if she remembers correctly, the histories were over _there_... 

Eamon does have the _Compiled History_ , thank the Maker. Marian drags it down, and _The Exalted Marches_ by Petrine, and someone's shelved _Thedas: Myths and Legends_ over here for some reason, so she takes that down, too. She's already got an armful of books, and she wanted _Tales of the Destruction of Thedas_ again, too; but she's no taller than she was last time she was here, and there's no convenient tall fellow Warden to give her a lift.

Eamon's not much taller than she is, come to think of it. He must have a stool somewhere... And of course, Wynne is sitting on it. Of course. Marian is not going to interrupt them again, she's just _not_ , and asking Wynne for the stool is out of the question. She'll just come back later, that's all. 

She gives _Tales_ one last look as she turns away, but Genitivi is there standing before her, blocking her escape. His eyes fall to the books in her arms. Suddenly Marian's nervous, like he's going to judge her on her reading material. "Excuse me," she says in a low voice. 

Genitivi looks at her thoughtfully and then up at the shelf. "Was there something you wanted up there?"

It feels so strange to be asking him to get down his own book for her. 

"Yes," Marian admits. "The _Tales of the Destruction of Thedas_. But I can come back – "

He forestalls her by reaching up and plucking it from the shelf, turning it over in his hands. "This is one of the first books I ever wrote," he says, smoothing the cover. She's read it before, she knows that the corners are a little frayed and the spine is loose, but he looks at it like it's precious. She understands the feeling.

Genitivi lays it gently on her pile and bends his head so he can read the spines of the other three books. Then he looks up at her, a sharp, considering look. "Qunari?"

Marian nods, a little taken aback. It's not a secret or anything, but she's surprised at his being able to figure out exactly what she's doing just by the books she's picked. 

Well, and she shouldn't be surprised, really. Genitivi is exactly the man she should have expected to know his materials inside and out.

Genitivi turns away, looking over the shelves with a critical eye. The instant his back is turned, Marian looks at his foot. She can't tell if he's healed or not. He's wearing boots on both feet now, but he could have bandages on underneath.

"Ah," he says, satisfied, and takes another book down from the shelf. She looks away before he catches her staring. It's a smaller book, about the size of her hand which is traditional for journals, bound in soft leather. "I thought I saw you there. Madoc of Alamar," Genitivi says to her. "He spent a year in Kont-aar. I think you'll find it... enlightening."

"Thank you," Marian says, smiles, and then flees like the darkspawn horde is on her heels. 

\---

She studies through the rest of the morning, through a tray of lunch and into the afternoon, curled up in her bed with her dog. Cú's perfectly willing to be her desk if it means he can lie on her legs. 

When she's done as much as she can, she sits back, regarding the books in front of her with a frown. Qunari are fierce, fierce fighters, of course – she'd known that already, just from Sten's example. Their tactics and strategies are good, surprisingly flexible, and when they meet an obstacle they can't fight through, they bring out cannons, gaatlok, or mages, which are all equally explosive. It doesn't surprise her in the least that they conquered half of Thedas – the only surprise is that it wasn't _more_. 

And then when they were backed into a corner, and Kont-aar was all that was left of their conquered territories, they just withdrew. Petrine offers a few possible reasons, but none are convincing. They left because they wanted to. It's tempting to think that they'd taken too many casualties, to an army that was already smaller than ideal, but somehow that doesn't ring true, either. 

_Myths and Legends_ is useless. Madoc's journal, on the other hand... She picks it up again. He'd been a wanderer, an adventurer, who at one point had lived in one of the smaller villages outside of Kont-aar. What he describes is so far out of her experience that she's not sure she's reading the words aright. Qunari society sounds like a beehive, like a swarm of ants, each working for the benefit of the whole and not for themselves. Can that really work? The Qunari seem to be thriving, but she's not sure she believes it. In her experience there is always greed, always abuse, and the small everyday cruelties that some people seem to need like they need breath in their lungs.

Marian sighs. This is depressing, and more importantly, it's not giving her any insight into Sten, though she does have a few ideas for small-party tactics. She piles up the books again to take back to Eamon's study when she goes down for dinner. _Tales_ ends up on top. Marian stares down at it. What is she _doing_? She has the foremost historian in Ferelden under the same roof as her and she's trying to learn things out of _books_? 

She snatches up the books and goes back downstairs. Genitivi is alone, and though at first he's surprised when she sits on the stool and asks him to tell her again about his travels in Rivain, and reserved in his speech, he soon warms to his subject. He's a natural storyteller, like Leliana. He takes her to Rivain, as she requested, though she does notice that he's creeping ever northward in his stories. He must know that she's pumping him for information about the Qunari. He doesn't seem to mind, thank the Maker. 

He detours west, into Tevinter's ever-simmering war with the Qunari: the siege of Qarinus, the sack of Alam, the first, second and third Battles of the Nocen. The Qunari always seem to have the edge in straight tactics, and the better fighters, and of course their ships are the better of any in Thedas, but when finally the Tevinter war machine gets started, they have the better mages. The Qunari use their mages sparingly, if at all, it seems. Marian wonders why.

They're interrupted by a servant who tells them that it's time to change for dinner. Marian follows Genitivi up to the guest wing, careful in case he trips, but there's no trace of the limp in his steps. Maybe he took the cure after all.

They part with smiles on both sides. Marian finally feels like she's been forgiven.

\---

The next day dawns pale and clear. That afternoon, Leliana and Zevran start Marian on wielding two knives at once. Well, they _try_. Marian has never appreciated how terrible she is at doing things with her left hand, or doing two different things with her hands at the same time. Leliana is sweet and encouraging, but even she wilts a bit after the second day of Marian dropping _both_ daggers when she tries to do something, or accidentally striking with both daggers when she's supposed to be guarding with one, or... 

Zevran just laughs. It's _not helping_. When she tells him so, he shrugs. "The style is not for everyone," he says. "But if you'd like to practice your coordination..."

Marian throws one of her practice daggers at him and his laughing face. He catches it. Of course he does. 

Sten is always out in the practice yards when she is, and she suspects that he spends quite a lot of time there. He actually greets her now when they pass. It's strange. 

If she's curious about the Qunari, shouldn't she ask a Qunari?

She will, Marian decides, but not yet. She's enjoying their détente, if she must be honest, and she's in no hurry to set him off again by opening her mouth. 

She sees Alistair in the practice yards sometimes, too; not all the time like Sten, but enough that she knows he's keeping up his weapon skills. Other times he disappears entirely. Not that she's looking for him. 

She's _not_. 

_Oh, to the Void with this_.

She might be avoiding him. A little. She doesn't think he's noticed yet – they _are_ busy with arranging their departure to Orzammar – but he will if she doesn't straighten herself out. While she's with him, the intensity of the way she feels, the warm, soft affection and lust and something else that she's afraid to name, they feel right. Better than right, really. He makes her feel whole. But then, when he's not near... Oh, Maker, she feels like she's going mad. How can she possibly feel this way about someone she met a month and a half ago? All her doubts are overwhelming her and she doesn't know what to do. 

Marian thinks what she's most afraid of is that this is nothing more than a teenaged fever dream, a flash in the pan, and that they'll implode spectacularly and she'll lose someone in her life who she really... enjoys spending time with. 

Her own inability to confront what she's really feeling is irritating in the extreme.

Marian is brought back to reality when Zevran starts prodding her in the ribs with the blunted dagger she'd thrown at him. "Marian? Are you in there?"

She hadn't permitted him free use of her name, but naturally, Zevran assumed it as his right. Marian sighs. There's a bench against the edge of the yard. She sits on it, her elbows on her knees, and stares at the dirt. 

Zevran follows, sitting next to her and stretching out his legs to their fullest extent. She can just see his boots. They're not as pristine as she would have expected; they're leather, and the toes are fraying and deep scratches mar the sides. Does he need better gear? He's the last person she would have expected to keep quiet about something like that, but she's also unsure of how far the idea that he's her man goes with him, and she and Alistair have made no secret about the leanness of their purse. She'll have to ask him later. 

His voice, when it comes, is a low, seductive invitation. "What's the matter, _tesoro_?"

And she's surprised to find that she wants to talk about it, to someone. _Anyone_. She looks up at Leliana, who's talking to one of the knights – that girl can make friends with anyone, it's a gift – but something about the idea of asking her for advice about Alistair feels strange. Confiding in Zevran has certain advantages, too. He's not so close to her that he won't give it to her straight. Well, perhaps with a minimum of flirting, which is the same thing for Zevran.

"Have you ever..." Oh, it's hard to _think_ it, much less say it, but trailing off where she left that sentence is inviting disaster and innuendo for _days_. So, quickly, before he can start, and before she can't go on. Marian turns her head to look at him from where she is, her eyebrows drawn into a tight, anxious line that she can feel. "Have you ever been in love?"

Zevran laughs. "Oh, yes, several times already today, in fact."

Marian groans and buries her face in her hands. _Why_ had she thought this was a good idea again?

But he doesn't go on, the way she'd fully expected him to; instead the silence lingers until it's uncomfortable. Marian lifts her face out of her hands to look back at Zevran. He seems to be very far away, in another time or place. He notices her looking at him, though, because he smiles again. It's wide and beautiful and genuine and it's still a mask, hiding whatever's going on inside of him. "No," he says.

"No, you've never been in love?" Marian asks, pressing the question, because... Because she thinks he's lying, that's why. 

"Ah, _cara mia_ ," he sighs, slouching infinitesimally lower on the bench. He tilts his face up to the weak, watery sun, chilled as it has been by the storm, and closes his eyes. He's from a warmer place than Ferelden. Is he a little bit cold all the time? "No, I have never been in love. In truth, I don't believe I'm capable." 

Whatever the truth is, it's gone now. It's disappointing. For a moment, she thought...

Then Zevran turns a wicked eye on her and says, "But I wonder what brought this on?"

Marian groans long and loud, but that's not going to save her. Nothing can save her now.

Later, much later, when she's escaped from the interrogation and bathed the practice yard's dirt away, she checks in with Bodahn to see how the resupply is going. It's no easy thing, either. Rations, fodder, clean water, all their primary and spare armor and weapons, clothes, cooking supplies, bandages, soap and rope and bedrolls and tents, three mages' worth of potion ingredients, Bodahn's trade goods, and their personal belongings – it makes for quite a lot of sheer _stuff_ that first they have to procure and then fit into Bodahn's wagon somehow. Bodahn's in his element, bossing servants and villagers around like drudges. She has to remember to thank Arl Eamon and Bann Teagan before they go. This would never be possible without their support.

Somewhere during the fracas, Bodahn beckons her over, off to the side away from the swirl of helpful hands. "We'll be ready when it's time," Bodahn says, tucking his thumbs into his belt with pleased satisfaction. "I'll have the wagon loaded this time tomorrow, though, so I'd appreciate if you'd bring down those things you're not needing at the moment."

Marian promises to tell the others. "Is there anything else we need?" 

"No, but..." Bodahn scratches at his beard. He looks concerned. "I went down the pub this morning for supplies – well, and a pint – and what did I find when I got there but some traders saying how King Endrin has passed on."

"King Aeducan?" Marian says, frowning. 

Bodahn nods. "Old as he was, he was probably poisoned or assassinated. That's how the dwarves do things."

"So..." Marian pinches the bridge of her nose, thinking hard. "So political turmoil and a brand-new ruler, that's what we're going to be dealing with?"

"And maybe a witch-hunt if they haven't figured out who killed King Endrin yet," Bodahn adds helpfully. 

Marian winces at the phrase, which is perfectly apt to the situation but it's also one that no mage likes to hear. 

"Is there anything else we need to bring, then? Gifts for the new king?"

Bodahn shakes his head. "The treaties should be enough, I think..." He looks troubled, though, and she understands why. This isn't good news for them. Especially the way their luck has been running lately. It seems like everything that can go wrong in Ferelden is going wrong, and all at the same time.

_Maker, have mercy_. _Please_.

Marian takes her leave of Bodahn with a distracted nod, hurrying back up to the castle. She should find Alistair and tell him about this development.

Though why she thinks he would care is a mystery. Politics bores him to tears. She's just manufacturing excuses to see him, really.

Maybe she should take herself up on them.

She finds Alistair frowning at his things in his room where he's meant to be packing. She _was_ going to talk to him. Really. But somehow she's got her nose in his throat instead, her eyes closed and her fingers clenched in his shirt, smelling his skin. She's forgotten what she was going to say. She's forgotten her nerves. Instead, she's wondering if he'd let her kiss him in places other than his mouth.

His hands settle on her hips. "What, here?" Alistair asks, sounding scandalized in a happy, delighted sort of way. "Now?"

Marian leans back, looking him right in the eye. "Alistair?"

He makes a soft, interrogative noise, his voice gone all husky and intimate. He can't seem to look away from her mouth. _She_ can't seem to stop smiling. He makes her feel... Beautiful. Powerful. Wanted. What was her problem again?

" _Shut it_." And she kisses his gorgeous, laughing face, and then neither of them are much interested in talking anymore.

\---

The wagon is fully packed the next day, as Bodahn promised. Isolde insists on having a formal dinner that evening to see them off. 

The next morning, they leave for Orzammar, bright and early.


	44. The Stone Prisoner

It's a little strange to be out on the road again. It's shocking how fast Marian got used to regular baths and food she doesn't have to cook or clean up after. To tell the truth, Castle Redcliffe's spoiled her. The freedom is nice, though, and the wind on her face and the spring sun shining down on her warm her from the inside out.

There are refugees heading west with them. Most of them are packed well and tight, ready for a long journey to Orlais or further, fleeing the Blight as best they can; but some have no more than the clothes on their backs. Marian glances at Alistair to find him looking at her already. He tilts his head at the refugees with his mouth tight. Marian nods. They have to at least look over the refugees they pass for the signs of the taint, and Marian knows that, but it doesn't make it any easier. 

It's lucky for them, in a morbid sort of way, that the symptoms of the taint are so immediate and impossible to hide. First the eyes grow a lining, silver like a mirror, that reflects light like a cat's. Black lesions spread from the point of infection out to the extremities and back again, following the heartsblood. The flesh rots out from underneath the skin, their skin shrinking and stretching over their bones, growing emaciated even as they speak of the hunger that's too strong to shake. Some people talk about a singing or a music that no one else can hear, one that grows stronger and stronger as the sickness progresses. She knows that tune. It sings in her blood even now. 

Whenever they meet refugees, Leliana and Wynne speak to them, offering assistance, while Marian and Alistair look each of them over for the lesions. So far they've been lucky. Marian doesn't want to think about what's going to happen when they find someone with the taint and they have to reveal themselves for who they are. She's trying not to, anyway.

The Imperial Highway takes them south for a few hours until they reach an intersection with a small road that leads further south into the western reaches of the Hinterlands. The highway turns north here. From afar, they can see what looks like a small camp and a number of people arguing. As they get closer, though, Morrigan casually mentions that it looks like some of them have weapons.

Marian glances at Alistair. Morrigan's got the best eyes of any of them. Without a word, they pick up their pace.

When they get there, the bandit leader tries to intimidate them into handing over whatever's in Bodahn's wagon. _Maker's breath, there's only four of them?_ Marian rolls her eyes and lets Alistair and Cú answer for her; she'd rather check on the others, who are obviously refugees. 

The rest of her companions trickle in, one after the other, Bodahn and the wagon last of all; he'd held back when it looked like a fight, keeping himself and Sandal out of the fray, just the way he ought. She nods at him. He salutes her with the reins, but then he's swinging out of the wagon, moving through the refugees, checking with the rest of her friends to see who needs help. 

Marian smiles. 

She turns to check on Alistair and Cú, but they're long since done with their task. None of the bandits seem to be dead, though, which is a nice surprise. They're unconscious on the ground. One is bleeding from the forehead and another is missing a rather large section of the leg of his breeches, but those are the only signs of violence. 

"I wanted to stop for lunch anyway," Alistair says to her with a grin. 

Marian opens her mouth to tease, but her stomach decides to join the conversation, rumbling loud enough that he can hear. Alistair laughs.

Disgruntled, Marian swings around and collars Bodahn to see what kind of lunch they can produce for this many people.

They eat that lunch with the refugees. It's only awkward once, when one of the women asks with a suspicious air what such a motley group of well-armed people are doing on the road. Leliana is quick with a story, as always, painting Bodahn as a wealthy merchant and the rest as his hired mercenaries to deliver wool and elfroot to Orzammar. 

Marian pulls that woman aside when they're done to ask if she and her group would be willing to march the bandits back to Redcliffe. It's only a few hours back along the highway, after all, and it's almost certain to be clear – they'd just come down that road. The woman's not exactly thrilled with the idea, but eventually Marian scores a point when she mentions Teagan. He's well-known and well-liked in his bannorn. Marian thinks that the woman and her friends must have lived somewhere near Rainesfere. 

"He'll help you," Marian says, coaxing her as best she knows how. It's not safe out on the road anymore. If Teagan can persuade them to stay in Redcliffe, that's for the best. "I know he will. He's that kind of man."

The woman agrees then, and rounds up the others with no more than a few well-chosen words. Marian seems to have picked the right person to talk to. Sten and Alistair tie the bandits into a line with a coil of rope Marian finds amongst the things they've looted from other people. From the looks of their camp, they've been here no more than a few days, not enough time to intercept too many people. They certainly hadn't been here last week when they came through from Haven. 

"Take what you can carry," Marian says to the woman, and backs away, right into the signpost that marks the intersection. Instinctively she turns and catches it, as if it were a person she'd bumped into, and then rolls her eyes at herself. 

She looks up at the signs.

_Linhurst 2_  
_Honnleath 3_  
_Old Applebury 7_

Marian frowns at the signpost. Honnleath means something to her. Something... _Oh!_ Marian goes over to Bodahn's wagon and digs amongst her personal things, taking a moment to stroke the box that holds Alistair's rose, and finds the golem control rod at the bottom. She'd never gotten around to looking up the symbols etched into it. Some of them are so familiar, though...

Marian finds Alistair in the confusion, her eyes going straight to him like she already knew where he was. He's helping a woman load up. "Do you remember that merchant?" Marian says to him. 

He answers without really paying attention, distracted as he is by his own hands fastening two bedrolls onto the woman's pack. "Do you mean the woman in the merchant's camp at Denerim? I've never talked to anyone who's heard of _chevre des cremiers_ before."

Marian eyes Alistair. "No? What's – " She shakes her head. She's never met anyone who likes cheese the way other people savor fine wines. "Never mind. No, I mean the one who gave us this." She holds out the golem rod for Alistair.

When he's finally done and the woman thanks him and moves away, Alistair turns, takes one look at the rod and groans. "You don't think that thing's actually for a golem, do you?"

"No," Marian has to admit. "I don't, not really." She slides a glance at Alistair from beneath her lashes, grinning conspiratorially. "But what if it is?"

It requires little more than the mental image of a seven-foot golem crushing their enemies to get Alistair to agree to a side trip. Marian sends Sten back with the refugees to keep an eye on the bandits, who keep threatening to escape and take their revenge in the most melodramatic, ridiculous sort of way she can imagine. Zevran is going with her, if only to give Wynne a break from comments about her bosom, and Morrigan would rather do anything than be stuck in a camp with Leliana and Wynne. Marian doesn't blame her. Those two, working together – the idea terrifies her a little, too.

The road leading south isn't paved, like the highway; it's only hard-packed dirt, wide enough for a horse or two people walking abreast. It's still a bit damp from the raging storm. It's about an hour to the smaller road leading to Honnleath, and then ten minutes or so before they spot the village, a little group of houses tucked into the rolling hills that grow to the west into the Frostbacks. There are a few farms beyond. It's an old village, built to last in stone and timber.

There are no signs of life, though. There's nobody in the fields, no smoke from cooking fires, no children playing or pets. Something feels wrong. As they come closer, Marian finds herself slowing, looking at everything with wary eyes. 

"Watch, now," Zevran murmurs. He's got a blade out already, without her noticing. It's a wonder that makes her feel safer. 

"So it's not just me?" Marian asks. All the while, the vague sense of something _wrong_ creeps into her guts and makes a nest there. It's stronger, too, and something smells foul, rotten, though she can't figure out where it's coming from.

"Darkspawn," Alistair says succinctly. "They just crop up everywhere, don't they?" He's got his shield out now, his hand on the handle of his sword. Marian sighs. 

"All right," she says. "Let's go."

It's a small pack that greets them, and it only takes a moment to get back into the flow of battle. She freezes one rock-solid and electrocutes two more, and by the time she's finished the battle is already done. They glance amongst themselves, wondering if that was it, but the sick feeling in her mind doesn't subside with the darkspawns' death the way it should have. 

There's another pack picking over decomposing bodies in the main square; there are more of the darkspawn here in terms of pure numbers, but that doesn't work out in their favor. The darkspawn get in each others' way more than anything. Marian and Morrigan stay well in the rear to deal out the death magics that Morrigan specializes in and the elemental attacks that are her preferred weapons, while Alistair attacks them head-on and Zevran circles around to the rear. 

When they're all dead, Marian checks the human bodies for any signs of life, even though she knows it's futile. But maybe... 

She'd known better, of course, if only from the smell; but it's still a blow when each and every body is cold to the touch. Some have been partially eaten. They've been dead a while, long enough that they're decomposing before her eyes. The darkspawn have been here for days. 

When she rejoins the others, she's worried, angry, heartsick, and oddly resigned to the death, to the destruction and horror of what they've found here. There's nothing they could have done to save this village, not realistically, but that doesn't help how she feels. 

There's more to the village up the hill, and more darkspawn, including a huge, tall, powerful Alpha and too many archers for Marian's comfort. She isolates the Alpha with a force field first of all, slaps a crushing prison around one of the genlocks, and sets to work with grim determination. She concentrates on the archers, who seem to think they're safe at range. They're mistaken. A few of them are isolated, and so she can drop a chain lightning and move on, but the nearer ones are too close to Cú and Zevran to risk what she'd done to Jory. 

Marian kills a fourth squat archer with lightning. She looks up to check on her friends in time to see the Alpha shake off her force field. It roars, swinging its huge axe at Alistair; he takes the blow square against his shield, but the sheer force of it knocks him off his feet onto his back. 

"Alistair!" Marian cries, her heart in her throat. She freezes the Alpha, or tries to, but it's simply too big to freeze solid like she does the littler ones. It's covered in a fine layer of frost instead that seems to hinder its movements, but it's got Alistair square in its sights, murder in its beady, inhuman eyes.

Zevran appears behind the Alpha as if by magic, melting into view like fog, and stabs the Alpha in the back, angling his dagger between two ribs and right into its heart with a practiced kind of precision. The Alpha roars again, this time in pain, but somehow it's still on its fucking feet. Slowed as it is by her frost, by the heartsblood that pours from the dagger still lodged in its back, it takes one implacable step toward Alistair. He's struggling to his feet, but he's off-balance, an easy target. Marian pulls hard on the Fade, spilling magic into her hand, but it's not going to be enough, it's not _fast_ enough, she's going to be too late – 

And then Cú makes an impossible leap, plowing into the Alpha from the side, knocking it over in its turn. It rolls onto its back to face its new attacker, and then it makes a queer groaning sound as Zevran's dagger drives deeper into its heart and out through the front of its body. Cú growls into its face, but it's already dead. 

Marian wipes her face with a shaky hand and turns to throw lightning from her hand at one of the archers she's yet to deal with. Morrigan's holding two of the short, squat ones with a clever combination of sleep and horror spells. Zevran casually leans over and stabs them each in the head.

Alistair knocks the last hurlock over and cuts its throat. Marian looks around to find a new target, but there aren't any more. The darkspawn are all dead. 

Cú's escaped without injury, but Zevran had gotten caught between one of the hurlocks and the archers, and he has an arrow lodged just under his shoulder blade and a long, thin gash on his thigh where he hadn't dodged quickly enough. Marian cleans him up quickly, watching Alistair check Morrigan for wounds out of the corner of her eye. She wants to get her hands on Alistair to make sure he's all right, but he's right there and looking fine, and Zevran needs help. 

She yanks out the arrow first of all. It hasn't gone more than an eighth of an inch into his skin, judging from the blood left on the head, and she tosses it aside. Zevran hadn't gotten much darkspawn blood on him – he says, with a grin, that he's too pretty to befoul that way – and it's good that she doesn't have to clean him up too much before she lays the healing spells on his skin. She does have to work her finger into the tiny hole the arrow ripped in his leathers to get to his skin, though, which is more intimate than she wanted to be with Zevran. So, too, is laying her hand on his bare thigh to heal the gash. 

"Ahhh," Zevran says, a long, luxurious sigh as she heals his leg. She'd take it for the relief of being without pain, but then he looks up at her with a long, lazy smile and bedroom eyes. Marian smacks him upside the head and stalks off, though she notices Alistair turning away with a poorly-hidden smile on his face. 

He can't be too badly hurt if he's smiling like _that_. 

When she reaches the top of the hill and she can finally see the clearing, she stops dead. There's another square around which houses are arranged all in rows and a green space in the center in which a huge, stone golem stands frozen like a statue, its fists raised, silently roaring its frustration at the heavens.

 _Huh._ She wouldn't have laid any odds on there actually being a golem here. 

She approaches it curiously. It's a little shorter than she expected from what she's read, and none of her books mentioned that the glowing lyrium lines that wend their way over and around it tease the eye and capture the mind. They're runes, of a strange and angular sort. The corners are crisp and pointed, the straight lines perfectly straight, the curves regular and symmetrical. Marian circles it, examining it from every angle. How is this done? How are they animated? The dwarves work lyrium with a facility that the other races will never be able to emulate. She can see that here in every line, in every curve, in every cunning, perfect join. They _must_ have lost the secret of this, or else they'd have an army of golems in the Deep Roads and they'd have a kingdom, not just one city.

There are crystals embedded in the golem's surface, blue ones that are scattered over its shoulders like stars. She touches one and the coolness of it, a coolness not born of nature, surprises her. 

She kicks over an empty basket as she moves around the golem, looking down to see a few scattered seeds spill out of it. Birdseed, maybe? But what's it doing here?

The rest have finally joined her when she circles back in front of the frozen golem. 

"'Twould appear it is defunct," Morrigan says thoughtfully. "Though there may be a way to revive it yet."

Marian pulls out the rod the merchant had given her and weighs it in her hand. This is supposed to control the golem, but she doesn't know how to use it. Hopefully it won't wake up and try to crush them all.

" _Dulef gar_ ," she says, the command the merchant passed to her sitting uncomfortably on her tongue.

Nothing happens. 

Marian waits a long moment, in case she's just being impatient, and then tries again and gets the same result. _Damn it_. Something's wrong, or broken or just plain old, and she doesn't know enough to decide whether it's her or the rod or the golem.

Marian turns to her friends and shrugs, trying to conceal her disappointment. "It was worth a try."

"And now that you have tried and failed, may we not move on?" Morrigan asks, her eyebrows raised expectantly. 

"We need to make sure we've cleared out the darkspawn first," Alistair points out.

And so they go building to building, checking attics and outhouses and cellars for darkspawn. Secretly Marian's hoping for a survivor or two, too, but they don't find anything except fighting and blood and death until they start to explore one of the cellars. It's bigger than most, three or four distinct rooms, with brewery and arcane equipment, a library that Marian wants to look at more closely, and even a tiny chapel. There's a whole pack of darkspawn here, too, though they're easier to put down than the ones up above. 

The cellar leads them deeper underground and further away from the main square, but they have to keep on, because even Marian can feel the darkspawn that lay ahead. The nausea is almost physical now. When they mount the stairs ahead of them and reach the top, she can finally see why.

There's not just a largish pack of darkspawn here, like she'd assumed; they have one of the darkspawn that wields magic, the kind Alistair told her was called an emissary. 

She remembers meeting one of them in the Korcari Wilds, and what it had taken out of her to kill it. 

The darkspawn haven't noticed them yet. They're trying to get through an odd, shimmering field of magic that blocks off part of the cellar and the humans who are hiding behind it. There are only five or six of the humans. The village is big enough to have supported upwards of a hundred people. The darkspawn can't have gotten them all... can they?

There are so _many_ darkspawn here, more than in the rest of the cellar combined. It's a long, drawn-out battle that only turns their way when Alistair uses his templar talents to clear the area of the thin, wicked glyphs the emissary lays down in thickets. Zevran goes down on the stairs where he's trying to keep a handful of darkspawn away from the rest. It's a foolish move, but it does help, keeping the darkspawn from flanking them entirely. 

Marian gets Zevran back on his feet, but the battle's already over by the time she's done. She leans on her staff, scrubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand. Maker, she's tired. This is a lot of fighting to do in one day, and she's under no illusions that they're done, and after _that_ , they have to burn the darkspawn bodies and do their best to make sure there's no blood left in the village. And that's saying nothing of helping the few survivors who are even now staring at them through the force field with such hope that it breaks Marian's heart.

She'd quite like to look around this room a little afterward, though; this is no hedge witch's back room. This is dedicated to serious research. There are pictures of Kinloch Hold on the walls, three of them, the only art she's yet seen. This is a Circle mage's laboratory, and a well-stocked one, too. Perhaps too well-stocked, Marian thinks, eyeing a dead fish pinned to a board. She makes a face. _Gruesome_.

She approaches the odd magical barrier cautiously. She's never seen anything like this, and it's hard to tell what it might be able to do if she gets too close. One of the men has control over it, though, and dismisses it in order to let Marian and the others inside. The other survivors flee when it comes down, even the one who looked so badly injured, but the first man stays, looking between them anxiously. 

She shows him the control rod when he asks what they're doing here. He sneers and tells her the story of the golem, how it's been left there for thirty years after killing a man. 

If it's uncontrollable, then this is a wasted trip. She doesn't need a mindless killing machine. She has Cú.

He needs something from her, of course. He asks her to fetch his daughter from the depths of what he says is his father's laboratory. She agrees readily, without thought; if there are magical defenses down there as he says, she'll stand a better chance of disarming them than this man, who is no mage at all. The barrier must be keyed to him in some way...

Marian shakes her head. _Later_. 

She looks at the narrow doorway to the rest of the lab and elects to leave Zevran behind. She's going, of course, and she may need Morrigan's help; and since Alistair's apparently been practicing his templar skills, she may need him, too. Cú's anxious underground, and she'd rather have him close by where she can keep him calm. 

He'd probably just follow her down, anyway. 

As soon as they step into the next room they're ambushed by demons. Marian and Morrigan do most of the damage while Alistair holds them off, and it's here that she finds the mage's journal. His name had been Wilhelm, which is unfamiliar to her; he writes of the defenses, of his laboratory and his studies, of the golem acting strangely, and of the demon he has trapped below. 

Of course there's a demon. Of _course_.

He writes that it's a tricky demon, too. There aren't many of those; they're usually too single-minded in their purpose to think of elaborate mind games. Desire demons are the exception to that. 

Marian closes her eyes. _Great_.

There's no sign of a child here anywhere, so they press further into the cellar. It's less of a structure here and more of a passage into the rock, rough-hewn walls showing tool marks and thick wooden posts holding up the ceiling. Eventually they come to another barrier, one that allows their passage, and they pass into a huge room with a high platform at the entrance and a strange fire apparatus set into the main floor.

The girl's here, though, so Marian holds out her hand and offers to take her back to her father. But the girl's got this cat that she won't leave behind. Marian tells her, not without some impatience, to pick it up and bring it with her, but then Cú growls, and...

And the cat stretches long and languorous, fore and aft, and says, "I would not suggest leaving in such hostile company anyhow, Amalia." 

Its eyes flash purple. A chill of terror crawls up her spine; Marian knows she's found the demon, and that nothing is going to go the way she wants it to. 

"Nothing you say will convince Amalia to go with you," the cat says to Marian, its huge eyes fixed on her face. Its pupils are flared huge in the bright, harsh light of the torches and the fire behind it, like black pools of the Void that threaten to suck her in and down into the deep. "She loves only me now."

"Let her go," Marian says. It's not a request. It comes out a little shakier than she'd like.

The cat-demon laughs, though it's bitter. "I? I cannot. I have done nothing to her. How could I? The mage made sure of that. I cannot leave this chamber." Its eyes slide past Marian then, behind her to the doorway – no, to the strange magical barrier that parted like water for Marian and her friends. The mage wasn't quite as stupid as she'd assumed, then, though this is still the stupidest idea anyone's ever had in the history of Ferelden. "No, Amalia found me. After decades of isolation, her company is... welcome."

Marian looks at the child – at Amalia – and searches her face for any sign that she understands anything of what's going on. Even a child can't think that talking cats are _normal_. But Amalia's off in her own little world, the kind children drop into so easily, where anything is possible and talking animals are the least of what might happen to a clever girl looking for an adventure. She won't be any help unless she can somehow throw off the simple charms the demon has thrown over her soul. 

The cat lifts a paw, examining it intently before attacking it with its tongue. "It seems we are at an impasse."

If Marian can get it to attack her, the shock of it ought to break the light hold the demon has over the girl's mind. She's fought a few desire demons by now, and all of them prefer to stand well in the rear while they direct attacks by human puppets or other, lesser demons at its command. 

She daren't look over her shoulder to see if Alistair and Morrigan are with her, but she doesn't have to. She knows her friends are ready for anything, which is the only saving grace of their current run of bad luck. 

"Let me propose... a compromise of sorts," the cat says, watching her with calculated, feline interest. The way its eyes light purple at the most random of intervals is slightly nauseating and also too fascinating for Marian's comfort. "Release me, mortal, and let me have the girl. Let us return to her father and leave this place forever."

Everything in Marian revolts at the idea. "No," she says, her voice horrified. "No, absolutely not. I'll kill you first."

"No!" Amalia cries. "Kitty!" She picks up the cat, hugging it to her chest before Marian can do more than take a step forward to stop her. She's backing away from Marian like _she's_ the one who's the danger. 

_Oh, no._  
  
Cú starts to growl, the low snarl that means he's on the ready. He senses the building threat before she can. 

The cat's eyes light from within, glowing brighter and brighter until Marian has to look away or be blinded. It's so angry – _too_ angry. "You will not take the child from me. She shall be mine, _forever_!" It turns its head to look Amalia in the eyes.

Only then does the girl realize what kind of danger she's in – only then, when it's too late. The horror in her eyes, the tiny, helpless gasp that she makes as the demon takes control, will haunt Marian's nightmares for a long time.

Alistair tries to purge the room of magic, but the demon is already inside Amalia, in physical control of her body. She looks up from her hands and she... She just smiles. It's sickening to see the triumph on her face, on _Amalia's_ face, in every line of her small body. 

Amalia throws her arms wide in exultation, and in summoning. Magic comes to her call, changing her physical form into something she's more comfortable with, like it's nothing, like she's pulling on a change of clothes. 

The demon – for there's nothing left of Amalia, not anymore – stretches a little. " _Ahhh_ ," it says, a sweet, seductive moan, like someone sinking into a comfortable chair after a long, hard day. 

Marian's got her staff out and a spell on her tongue long before she knows what she means to do. It's a shock to realize that she's got her dagger out, too, clenched in her hand so tightly her knuckles are white. It's not safe to get so close to demons, but Maker, she'd like to stab it right in the demon's smug, smirking face – 

The demon summons more of its kind, four more fire demons that crawl out of the ground like undead crawling out of their graves, and gratefully Marian gives herself to the battle so she doesn't have to think anymore.

It's a sickeningly easy battle. The demon's been trapped so long that her spells are slow and clumsy. It only gets one good hit in on them before Alistair cuts its head off. She should have killed the cat the instant it spoke, the instant she realized what it was. Maybe then Amalia would still be alive.

Unlike most demons, its body doesn't disappear when it dies, though Marian waits for a long, long time, hoping it will with every breath she takes. 

"Warden," Morrigan murmurs, probably to remind her that they have other things to do than stand there and navel-gaze. Morrigan sees no reason to mourn. Marian closes her eyes, opening them again when Alistair nudges her. They're right that this isn't the time. She just... She needs a second.

That poor, poor girl. She'd been so scared when she finally realized that something was wrong. She'd never had a chance, not really. _Maker take you to his side_. _Please_.

"I know," Marian says in the end, so softly she's not sure they heard her. Fire pours from her hands to immolate the demon's body. She can't let Amalia's father see what happened here. He never needs to know this. It's not important. And if that's her guilt talking... She doesn't care.

\---

More demons attack them on the way out, but Marian cuts through them like a honed knife in a guilty, heartsick rage. Amalia's father guesses that something has happened as soon as she comes back without his daughter, but for a moment, she's so, so tempted to tell him that _your father killed your daughter with his pet demon_. 

She doesn't, of course. But she wants to. 

Every word dull and cold, he gives her the way of activating the golem and leaves. Marian watches him go. In a way, she envies him. She can't even really let herself feel everything that lives inside her; she has to keep that thin sliver of cool, rational will, the thing that is a watch on the rest of her mind so a demon doesn't slip in the way it almost had at Haven. 

There's nothing she can do for him except silently wish him good fortune.

Marian eyes the golem's still form with distaste. She's not sure this is a good idea, not if the thing killed its previous owner, and her previous enthusiasm has been... somewhat dampened by events. 

"I don't know about this," she says out loud.

"Agreed," Alistair says. He's looking at the golem with uncertain consideration, like he's looking for its weak spots, but Marian also thinks he's not used to interacting with anything taller than he is. The golem towers over Alistair by a good six inches. Marian's craning her neck uncomfortably just to look at its face. "It shouldn't hurt to at least wake it up, though, not if you have the control rod, right?"

"Its previous owner also possessed the control rod," Morrigan points out, delighting a little too much in picking apart Alistair's logic. "The golem seemed content enough to crush him."

Marian brings the words of the enchanter's journal to mind, rereading the passage she'd only skimmed. "Wilhelm thought that the demon might be influencing the golem," Marian says. "He was going to deactivate it before he dealt with the demon, just in case."

"If that's true, then we shouldn't have anything to worry about, right?" Alistair says hopefully.

Zevran laughs. "That is a very large _if_ , my friend."

"I'm doing it," Marian says flatly. "Back up a bit in case it tries to squash me." She'd meant it as a joke, but it falls flat, maybe because she's sort of hoping it does. She could use something to work out her emotions on.

Her friends back away, though Alistair doesn't go far; she can feel him staring at the back of her neck. Sometimes she wishes he wouldn't _worry_ so much. 

" _Dulen harn_ ," she says carefully, control rod in hand.

Immediately a thin, white fog begins to pour out of the cracks and crevices in the golem's body, flowing like water down to the ground and disappearing into the earth. Its head moves first with a sharp, sudden _crack_ that makes Marian jump. Slowly its head comes down to face her, grinding and grating against its body, against the collar that passes for its neck. Its arms come loose with an explosive _snap_ and the rest of its body follows. It twists at the waist and bends its knees, each movement accompanied by the low grating sounds of rock on rock that Marian is coming to realize are all that allow it to move in the first place. The golem isn't one whole creature of rock, it's many smaller rocks somehow conjoined. 

_Is it magic?_ Marian wonders, fascinated, greedily watching the golem move. _Or is it lyrium?_ Dwarves can replicate many things with cunning lyrium crafting, but _this_? 

When it's finished testing all of its joints, it looks at her, examining Marian with glowing white eyes just the way Marian is watching it. She wouldn't have expected the absence of a pupil to disconcert her, but it does. It's so hard to tell exactly what the golem is looking at.

And then it sighs, with very real emotion, which is not what Marian was expecting. "I knew that the day would come when someone would find the control rod." 

She wasn't expecting it to speak, either. The _way_ it speaks, though... It's got a grating, harsh, flat affect, not so human as to unsettle her and not so alien that it scares her. It hovers somewhere between those two extremes, slightly disconcerting, slightly alien, altogether unnerving. 

It looks Marian up and down again before adding, "And of _course_ it is another mage. That is what it is, yes? Yes. Just my luck."

There's a very real personality there, another thing Marian wasn't expecting. The control rod is very heavy in her hand now. She's uncomfortable with the idea of commanding something that might be self-aware enough to resent being controlled. This is looking like one more thing they should have passed by. 

Though then they wouldn't have known about the darkspawn raid. _Damn_. There's no way to know how far the darkspawn have spread, not without more Grey Wardens. It's the whole _point_ of their order. Loghain's done exactly right if he wants to ensure that Ferelden falls to the horde. Then it'll free to swarm Orlais with the freshly converted population of Ferelden swelling its numbers. Maybe this is all some grand scheme of Loghain's to repay Orlais for fifty-eight years of brutal occupation.

Their only choice is to get the support that they need, as fast as they can. And for that they need all the help they can get. That's why they're here, after all. Only this isn't the silent walking machine Marian had pictured. This is something uncomfortably like a person.

"I am a mage," she says cautiously. "And so is Morrigan. Is that a bad thing?"

The golem turns its head to regard Morrigan; at least, Marian thinks that's what it's looking at. "Hmm. Another mage. Charming." Its sarcastic, dry tone leaves no doubt regarding its feelings about mages. 

It looks around at the village, the darkspawn bodies, the rubble and wreckage from the darkspawn attack. "And I was just beginning to get used to the quiet, too. Tell me, are all the villagers dead?"

Somehow Marian thinks it wouldn't care if they were. She wonders that it bothered to ask at all, even with that indifferent tone. "No," she says. "Not all." She doesn't want to think about Amalia. She _won't_.

"I stood in this spot and watched the wretched little villagers scurry around me for, oh, I have no idea how long. Many, many years." It looks around again, this time at the little village green it stands in and the overturned basket of birdseed. "Familiarity breeds contempt, as they say, and after thirty years as a captive audience, I was as _familiar_ with these villagers as one could possibly be."

And as contemptuous, of course. But Maker, thirty years of standing here and watching as the villagers lived out their lives? Thirty years of watching ordinary people go about their ordinary lives? Would _she_ be able to keep hold of her sweetness of temper? 

"Not that I wished their fate on them, of course, but it did make for a delightful change of pace," it adds off-handedly. 

" _Creepy_ ," Alistair says, disturbed. It looks at him, and then down his body, pausing at his armor and the sword on its belt. It's assessing him. He shuts up. 

It turns its eyes back to her with a satisfied little smirk and just... watches her. It does have some tiny movement in its face, after all; its eyes widen and narrow, the overhangs that echo eyebrows raise and lower, and its lips are surprisingly mobile. Its face looks like it's made to convey emotion, in fact, so its maker must have anticipated the need for conveying emotion. From there it follows that its maker knew it would have a personality and chained it to a control rod anyway. 

Marian shivers. That's a train of logic she wishes she hadn't followed to its conclusion.

"Well, go on, then," it says impatiently. "Out with it. What is its command?"

"They told me you killed the last person who commanded you," Marian says, watching it for... anything, any kind of emotion that might tell her what it's thinking. She can't decide if she thinks it has complete control over its face or not. Either way, it should tell her _something_. "Did you?"

The golem tilts its head. "Did I?" It sounds like it couldn't care less. "I honestly don't remember. Perhaps it was after yet another time he called me 'golem'. 'Golem, fetch me that chair.' "Do be a good golem and squash that insipid bandit.' And let's not forget 'Golem, pick me up. I tire of walking.'" Bitterness is a living, breathing thing in every clench of its fists, every narrowed eye, every pithy and precisely picked word. 

It raises a craggy overhang at her. "It... does have the control rod, doesn't it? I am awake, so it must..." It trails off thoughtfully. 

Marian looks down at the control rod in her hand. "It's right here," she says, stating the obvious. She looks back up at the golem. "Is something wrong?"

Its eyes narrow. "I _see_ the control rod, yet I feel..." _You feel_ what _?_ Marian wants to demand. She's more confused about the golem than she was when she woke it up. "Go on," it demands. "Order me to do something."

"All right," Marian says slowly. She points at the edge of the green, the further edge. "Go over there."

She's only half-expecting it to actually do it at this point, so it's not a complete surprise when the golem stays standing exactly where it is. "And... nothing?" it says, its eyes narrowed, like it's asking _her_. "I feel nothing. I feel no compulsion to carry out its command. I suppose this means the rod is... broken?" 

She's taken half a step back toward the others before she gets hold of herself. The golem isn't threatening them. It's just... It's just very large, and very close, and Marian's imagination is very good; it's all too easy to imagine the pure, physical power at its command. Not the least of those powers is the way that it makes her feel small and frail and mortal.

Still, she's acting like a scared mouse. 

"Are you sure?" she asks.

The look it bends on her is scathing. "It thinks I am unable to tell the difference?"

Put that way... Marian looks at the control rod in her hand. She could keep it for the purpose she'd originally intended for it, the symbols etched into the surface, or...

She offers the rod to the golem. "Do you want it, then?"

It shivers in distaste, its body making a delicate, almost musical grating sound as it moves. It's charming, actually, that something as huge and as menacing as the golem can make that kind of noise. "I wish never to lay eyes on it again," it tells her. "It may do anything it pleases with the thing."

 _All right, then._ Marian shoves it into her pack. She'll do something with it... later. Much later. "What now?" she asks the golem. "You asked after the villagers – are you planning some sort of vengeance?"

"Don't be ridiculous," says the golem dismissively. "Though I wouldn't mind avenging myself on the birds... those evil birds and their foul droppings. I could crush them all!" It pauses, like it's really and truly thinking about going on a bird-killing spree, and Marian just _stares_ at it.

Can golems go mad? 

"Hmm," it says while she's considering. "I suppose if I can't be commanded, this means... I have free will. It is simply... what should I do? I have no memories, beyond watching this village for so long. I have no purpose. I find myself at a bit of a loss." It turns glowing eyes back on Marian. "What about it?" it demands. "It must have awoken me for some reason, no? What did _it_ intend to do with me?"

It feels very odd to be called _it_ all the time. 

"When I was thinking of you as just a powerful magical object, I thought... " Marian shakes her head. "But you're not an object. You're not at all what I expected." She shrugs. "I'm afraid I don't have any answers for you."

It stares at her, taken aback. "How... unexpected," it says slowly. "Yet refreshing." It looks around again, this time without the cynical amusement, the remote disdain. It truly seems like it's looking for a way forward. Or a way out. It hasn't moved from the place that it stood in for lo those many years, at the top of the slight rise in the green, though it obviously could. Why not? If Marian were stuck in one spot, in one position for _years_ , moving even a pace away would be the first thing she'd do.

But thirty years is a long time. It must be... familiar. Maybe leaving that familiar place, that safe place, is harder than Marian thinks it should be. Maybe she shouldn't judge other people's emotional reactions when hers can be just as suspect. 

Maybe it's a little strange to ascribe emotional reactions to a golem.

"I suppose I have two options, do I not?" it says. "Go with it, or... go elsewhere? I do not even know what lies beyond this village."

"What do you _want_ to do?" Marian asks, prodding.

"I watched this village for so long, unable to move or act. My memories of anything before are... vague at best. So I have no idea what I want to do." It shakes its head. "I am glad to be mobile, is that not enough?"

 _No_ , Marian thinks, a little sadly. But far be it from her to tell it otherwise. She's honestly a little shocked that the golem is considering coming with her. Maybe it's a kind of imprinting, like in baby birds. It could also be that they're the only familiar things in the world right now and it doesn't want to be alone, lost and drifting in a sea of darkspawn.

How can she blame it? How can she trust it? 

"You killed your former master," she points out. "How can we trust you?"

"I have no idea," it says. "How does it trust anything else without a control rod?" 

Marian's struck dumb for the first time in a long while. She doesn't even know how to _begin_ to answer that one. "I've no earthly idea," she says blankly.

"Hmm," it says, looking over her friends. "They haven't killed it yet. I consider this a good sign."

Marian herds the others into a tight circle to discuss, but no one has any objections except what Alistair puts best. "It could be dangerous," he says. "And _large_."

Zevran laughs. He's the only one who hasn't seemed bothered at all, by any of this. Marian imagines he's seen worse. "It is both of those things already."

"I'm going to ask it to come with us," Marian says, making up her mind. Alistair objects and she placates him with the truth – they need every ounce of help they can get, even the kinds that try to kill them first. He doesn't object after that, at least out loud, but she can tell that he's still wary. That's fair. So is she.

Marian lays out their mission, their fight against the Blight and the darkspawn and where they're going. It nods when she's finished. "I will follow it about, then... for now. I am called Shale, by the way."

Is that its name, or is it a descriptor? Marian wants quite badly to ask, but it feels rude, somehow. "I'm Marian," she says. She introduces the rest, even Cú, who barks once in greeting.

"Charmed, I'm sure," Shale says drily. "If we're quite finished?"

They are, at least with Shale, but there's much left to do. They collect the bodies of the villagers and the darkspawn in a huge pile away from the rest of the village, and while Morrigan goes around with Zevran to fire the darkspawn blood that's soaked into the soil, Marian focuses her will on lighting the pyre. She keeps the flames as high and hot as she possibly can, so hot that her face is tight and smarting from the heat and she's sweating. 

When she's exhausted beyond belief and she's nothing left in her to feed the flames, she lets the fire die. There are only fragments of bones left. She doesn't know if that's enough to blight the land, but she's afraid that it might. 

Alistair approaches her. He's tired, too. He and Shale moved most of the bodies, and he's been digging in the rubble ever since, looking for more bodies or any signs of the taint. "I can't do any more," she tells him before he can ask. "I'm sorry."

He glances at the bones and then dismisses them. "You've done enough," he says. He lifts his hand to brush her face, but his gloves are a mess of gore and dirt. He drops his hand with a sigh. "It's fine. They're no danger."

Marian closes her eyes. "I'm so _tired_ ," she tells him.

He chivvies her into putting one foot in front of the other, gets her down the hill and out of the village before she hears a rich, wet _squelch_. Marian stops and turns to find Shale standing by the corpse of a pigeon that's been crushed almost beyond recognition. After a moment of staring, it shrugs at her.

 _Oh no_ , Marian decides. She isn't touching that one, not with a ten-foot pole. She turns around and trudges away, the others behind her, starting the long walk back to the Imperial highway.


	45. The Golem

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the radio silence. It was a family medical emergency that shouldn't happen again. I won't be updating weekly anymore, but updates should at least be regular. Thanks for understanding.

"I leave you alone for _two seconds_ – "

Marian groans. She refuses to get up. No one can make her.

"And you bring home a _golem_? That's it," Leliana declares, dropping next to Marian before the campfire. "You're not going anywhere without me anymore."

Marian opens one eye to assess how much trouble she's in. Leliana's glaring at her, but her mouth is trembling a little, like she's trying not to laugh. Marian sighs, rolling over onto her back to stare at the night sky. "I hate you," she says to the stars.

Leliana makes a dismissive noise in the back of her throat. Marian allows her head to tip over to the side so she can see Leliana. She's staring across the fire at Shale. The fire lights her face from below, casting her eyes into shadow.

"It killed its former master," Marian says softly.

Leliana looks down at her, shocked. "What? Then why did you bring it back with you?"

It's a good question. When she gropes for the answer, all she can think of is the way that Shale looked when it asked what their purpose was, when it said it didn't remember anything of the outside world, the way it hesitated before taking the first step away from the place where it had dwelt for so many years. 

"It looked so lost," Marian says, looking at Shale across the way. It's just standing there, some distance from the campfire, examining a fallen tree branch with intense interest. "It asked _me_ what I thought it should do." _The way you all do. As if I had any answers. As if I knew what I was doing. As if I weren't as lost as everyone else._ "And really, who are we to judge? Zevran's an assassin, you were a bard, Sten murdered a whole family of innocent people and he won't talk about why." She stops herself, taking a breath to quell the threatening tears. "We're all killers. The only difference is in what we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night."

She's not anticipating a lot of sleep tonight. Maybe she'll stay up and get something useful done for a change instead of staring at the roof of her tent.

Leliana tucks a stray curl behind Marian's ear. "Did something happen?" she asks gently.

Marian laughs. She tries to pretend that it wasn't half a sob. "Of course something happened," she says. "When _don't_ things happen to us?"

But Marian won't talk about it, no matter what Leliana says, and eventually she gives up and goes to bed, leaving Marian lying on the ground staring into the fire. Cú is a warm weight against her back. She falls into something that's almost a trance, like her meditations; she watches the fire, the smoke, the embers falling away into the firepit, the logs shifting and cracking, the way lines of fire crawl over them and consume. She doesn't notice the time passing until Alistair sits next to her. He's got second watch.

"Can't sleep?" Alistair asks her, his voice low and sleep-rough. It's easy to imagine the way he looks, his armor sitting picture perfect, his shield on his back, and his hair a mess from his pillow. He never fixes his hair when he has midnight watches.

Instead of answering, Marian pushes herself over until she can put her head in Alistair's lap. Cú grumbles and moves, too, curling up tighter, fitting himself in the space behind her knees. Alistair rests his hand on her hair. Only now, surrounded by the people she trusts most in the world, can Marian finally sleep.

\---

They move on the next day. They're ambushed by a number of darkspawn just before noon; in between spells, Marian can see Shale crushing darkspawn with its feet. _Literally_ crushing. It devastates the darkspawn before it, smashing heads until they pop. Thank the Maker it's on their side, but – she'll have to get it to bathe afterward. _Ew_.

They're not pushing the pace this time. They've decided that they'd rather be rested for whatever Orzammar has in store for them, and in fact they spend a few hours on the road tossing around ideas for what they might face if their luck runs true. The truth is probably something about politics and therefore somehow both boring _and_ depressing, so she's glad when Leliana smiles impishly and says that she's five sovereigns on subterranean bunny-pigs taking over the city.

Somehow the suggestions get _more_ ridiculous after that. Marian's secretly hoping for dragons.

Sten and Shale are getting on like gangbusters. The tall, dark, and terrifying club is having its first meeting. Marian doesn't know why she's surprised.

On the third day, they pass the little track that led them to Haven. They don't stop, but Marian looks down it as they pass, and then she can't seem to look away. She still doesn't understand that place, or those people. She has this feeling, too, that she never will. She _hates_ that.

Alistair nudges her in the ribs, breaking her train of thought. "Penny for 'em," he says, ducking his head a little to look into her face.

"I promise, they're not that interesting," she asks ruefully.

"You're only saying that so I'll stop asking." He sighs, shaking his head. "I get it, I get it. Keep your secrets, woman. I'll get it out of you eventually."

Marian laughs, looking him up and down out of the corner of her eye. "Maybe I'm wondering exactly what you use in your hair to make it..." She gestures at her own forehead." _Floof_ like that in the front."

"The blood of my enemies, of course," Alistair says easily. Then he frowns, looking up as if he could see his own hair. His eyes cross. "I'm running out. Do you think Sten has some I can borrow?"

They tease each other mercilessly for the rest of the day. It's so much fun, and exactly what she needed. She's never met anyone who can take her out of her own head so thoroughly the way Alistair does just by being himself.

They don't get to walk together very often anymore. Her sense of the darkspawn is increasing day by day; she can feel them coming more reliably, so she trusts herself on point or as their rearguard now where she hadn't before. Her appetite is holding steady, but at least it isn't getting _worse_ , though she's not sure how it could. She feels more like a Warden instead of a little girl playing one. 

If there are other side effects of the Joining, she hasn't noticed them yet. She's stronger, and her magic has grown in both knowledge and power, but those can both be put down to the incredible and unrelenting amount of fighting she's been doing since she left the Circle.

She lets herself enjoy the respite.

\---

It's her turn tonight to start dinner, but when she gets there to start preparing it, Bodahn's already taken it over. "I'm sure you have better things to do than cook," he says to her, with a hopeful, appealing smile that makes Marian laugh despite her pique. And it's true that even she doesn't want to eat her own cooking. She shrugs and goes away again, going through the list of camp duties that she needs to do – she thinks that her boots and armor only need a swipe and a hard brush to get the worst of the road dust off, but Leliana already has her tent up. She's waiting with commendable patience.

It's not the worst idea to practice in her armor, Marian decides, and goes to join her.

Afterward she regrets that decision so much. She's sore _everywhere_ , but the worst is her shoulders, carrying all the weight of her scale mail and the fighting moves that Leliana is still trying to drill into her muscle memory. Leliana won't even let her collapse and whine, which is all she wants to do.

"If you'd like to be stiff and sore tomorrow..." Leliana says, shrugging.

And the worst part is, she's right.

Marian ditches her armor in her tent and sets up by the campfire, putting herself through her stances instead. They're designed to stretch all of her stubborn and unhappy muscles in turn. She reaches for the flow and the synergy between them that she _knows_ exists. She can see it when Leliana shows her the movements, or when she joins Marian in the evenings. She just can't quite do it herself. _Practice_ , she thinks with determination, tired as it may be. _It's just practice._

"You are not quite as callow as I thought," Sten says out of nowhere, like he's continuing a conversation they'd been having. "That is... unexpected." She glances down at him, but she doesn't stop.

" _Callow_?" Marian repeats in disbelief. "Of all things, you thought I was _callow_?" The word reminds her of fresh-off-the-farm doughboys, pasty, pimply, and gawking at everything the Circle has to offer. She moves into a new stance and winces. _I didn't even know I had muscles there_...

"You sound surprised," he says. He looks up at her, raising his eyebrow when he sees the dismayed expression on her face. "You must have heard this before."

"Believe it or not, no," she says between her teeth.

Sten shrugs. "You'll get over it. Eventually."

She's evidently meant to take this as a _compliment_. Marian sighs and sits next to Sten, folding her legs. It does sting a little that his opinion of her was that low to begin with. At least it sounds like it's not anymore. She's grateful for that much, at least. She rests her chin on her knees and watches Sten scrupulously polish his borrowed sword. "I have a question, if you don't mind," Marian says tentatively.

"I am hardly surprised." And yet he doesn't sound irritated or annoyed.

It's a strange kind of permission, but she'll take it. "Why were you in that cage where I found you?"

She knows the barest facts of the matter; Leliana passed on that much. But she's curious to find out how Sten frames the situation. The way he approaches it will tell her as much or more than his actual words, if she knows him at all – and by now she thinks she does. At least a little.

"I caged myself," he says, matter-of-fact. "A weak mind is a deadly foe, as you are no doubt aware."

She knows that lesson by heart now. In Haven, in the midst of pain and rage she'd slipped, just for a moment, and she'd nearly done something unforgivable. It doesn't surprise her that he knows that lesson too, only that it's so clear for him to see on her face.

Sometimes Sten goes a little cryptic and philosophical in a turn of mood that intrigues her.

"You said that you wanted to regain your honor," Marian says, casting her mind back to the things he'd said to her when first they met. Her eyes are half-closed with the effort. "Were you punishing yourself?"

"I know that my failures were my own." Sten's watching the fire now. It casts strange shadows on his face, ones that move and shift, creating the illusion of movement on his face where there is none. He's quiet for so long that Marian thinks she's lost him, but after a long while, he does speak again. "I came to your lands with seven of the Beresaad – my brothers – to seek answers about the Blight. We made our way across the Fereldan countryside without incident, seeing nothing of the threat we were sent to observe, until the night we camped by Lake Calenhad." He pauses, though whether for breath or to delay what's clearly an emotional story for him she can't tell. 

"They came from everywhere," he says softly. She has to scoot a little closer to hear him. "The earth beneath our feet, the air above us, our own shadows harbored the darkspawn. I saw the last of the creatures cut down, too late. I fell."

"That's what Ostagar was like," she says, remembering. The memory is strange, removed, like it happened to someone else, in another life. "They came out of nowhere. They just..." They'd been so quick and so quiet. The four of them hadn't a chance. Those poor guards – she'd never gotten their names.

Though, come to think of it... how had the darkspawn gotten inside the fortress to take the Tower of Ishal in the first place? And where had that second wave of darkspawn come from, the ones who overwhelmed them in the end? It's very poetic to say they melted up out of the ground, but that makes them sound like dwarf gremlins. Darkspawn use doors, just like the rest of them.

"I heard the stories of Ostagar," Sten says. She looks back at him in time to catch something that almost looks like approval on his face. It's wiped clean in the next moment, but she knows what she saw – it's just hard to believe. "Your kith stood their ground when others fled. No one can do more than that."

She closes her eyes and takes a moment out of time to think of Duncan and all of the Grey Wardens she'd never had a chance to meet, victims of Loghain's treachery and the darkspawn who swallowed them whole. They deserved better. She thinks of Amalia, too, and Lissette and Rashmi, and the poor knight of Redcliffe whose body she'd found in Haven. She remembers them. She'll keep remembering them, as long and as well as she can. 

"I don't know how long I lay on the battlefield among the dead, nor do I know how the farmers found me," he says. "I only know that when I woke, I was no longer among my brothers, and my sword was gone from my hand."

That means something to him, something she doesn't understand. And it's specifically about his sword, not about feeling weaponless and vulnerable.

"So what did you do?" Marian asks.

"I searched for it. And when that failed, I asked my rescuers what had become of it."

"And did they know?"

Sten shakes his head. "They _said_ they found me with nothing."

Marian's eyebrows draw together in confusion. "Did you not believe them?"

"I did believe them," he says. He won't look at her, like he's mesmerized by the fire, but she can still see his profile, the campfire painting color across his features. "I knew they didn't have the blade. They had no reason to lie to me." His face could be carved from marble, that's how still he is, but his _voice_ – For the first time, it's like he's letting down those huge, strong walls that separate him from the people around him, giving her a glimpse of the person who lives inside. "I panicked. Unthinking, I struck them down."

Marian hugs her knees closer. This is... She knows she asked for it, but she doesn't want to hear this from someone she'd cautiously come to like. "But _why_?" she asks, upset. "They couldn't have been any kind of threat to you."

"I know." He speaks quietly, and so still. "I cannot justify what I have done. My honor is forfeit." _So were their lives_ , Marian wants to say, but he knows. He _knows_ , and belaboring the point isn't going to change anything. She can't force him to react the way she wants him to, and if his reactions are a little bit alien to her... Well, so is he.

"That sword was made for my hand alone," he goes on. "I have carried it from the day I was set into the Beresaad. I was to die wielding it for my people. Even if I could cross Ferelden and Tevinter unarmed and alone to bring my report to the arishok, I would be slain on sight by the antaam. They would know me as soulless, a deserter. No soldier would cast aside his blade while he drew breath."

Marian stares at him. "So instead of having a look around, you killed the people who were trying to help you?"

"If I knew where to look, it would be in my hand now," Sten says, his words short and chopped. He's growing impatient with her. She can't blame him, except that –

All right. If a soldier is nothing but a part of the machine of war, then... losing his weapon makes him unfit for duty? It makes a certain kind of sense – if she stands herself on her head to look at it. She doesn't understand the Qunari at _all_. Good thing she wasn't raised under the Qun...

"Where was that farm?" she asks.

Of all things that's the one that turns his head. He's looking at her like he can't make sense of what she just said. "What? If it's that important to you, we can keep an eye out," Marian says, feeling oddly defensive.

"It was near Lake Calenhad," Sten says, after a long silence. "Perhaps those words are empty, but... " He hesitates, searching her face. "Thank you all the same."

With that he gets up. Marian lets him go. She doesn't want to talk to him until she's digested the thing she just learnt. She'd already known about the farmers' death, but she'd been thinking that he'd had a reason, or... something, _anything_ , that would have made up part of the gap toward justifying his actions. She would never have guessed that he'd quite simply lost it.

She can't decide if it makes it better or worse that he understands and acknowledges that he did something horrendous. It's not like he can go back and bring them back to life, or stop himself from killing them in the first place. Punishing him seems exquisitely pointless.

It feels wrong to just let it go, though. Though there's nothing she thinks she could do; but even if she could, should she?

She doesn't _approve_ , of course, but she thinks she's made that clear enough. She doesn't have the right, legal or otherwise, to force some kind of punishment on him. The way he'd been talking... _He caged himself_ , she thinks. And if they're going to hunt around a bit for his sword the next time they pass through Lake Calenhad, then maybe she can check if there's anyone Sten can make some sort of reparations to.

As always, Marian feels better when she's made a decision, for good or for ill. Some of the disquiet roiling in her stomach fades, and she lifts her head to survey the camp. Cú is lying a few feet away. She hadn't even noticed him.

Her head comes up with a sharp jerk when she hears Alistair's shocked, mortified voice ring out across the camp. "Andraste's flaming sword! _I know where babies come from!_ "

Marian clamps both hands over her mouth to hold back her cackle of absolute disbelief. She can't help her wide eyes, though; she searches out Alistair, who's sitting with a pile of armor next to Wynne. He's staring at her. His ears are bright red, as is everything else she can see.

Wynne continues talking, too quietly for Marian to hear, but oh, she knows that look on Wynne's face. Alistair's in for it now.

Marian should feel guilty about how much she wants to give in to the laughter bubbling inside of her right now, but his face is _priceless_.

Alistair narrows his eyes and says something else to Wynne before getting up and stomping off in a bit of a huff. He hasn't got his shoulders up around his ears the way he does when he's feeling put upon, so Marian feels safe in assuming he's not truly upset.

Still. It's a bit embarrassing, and she just knows Morrigan's going to have a few choice words for him later.

Wynne smiles, and sits calmly, watching the fire like she's just enjoying the warmth. _Maker_ , Marian thinks with another helpless giggle. _She's evil_. Alistair avoids talking to the rest of them all night, and Marian lets him. She'll catch up with him tomorrow.

\---

The next day, sometime during their morning march, Marian watches Shale disappear into the bushes and thin, young trees that line the highway. For the third time.

When it comes back this time, Marian increases her pace so she's walking beside it. Shale looks down at her, a brow-bone raised in silent enquiry. "What are you doing when you go into the forest?" she asks.

"Hunting for pigeons and other foul creatures of the sky," is its reply. "I wish to exterminate them more effectively. To do so, I must confront the disgusting things where they dwell."

"...Oh," Marian says, at a total loss for words. "Of course." Shale sighs, a heavy, irritated sort of noise, and they walk on in silence for a while as Marian recovers her equilibrium.

"You're not quite what I expected," she says ruefully.

"Oh? Did you think I would be different? Different than what?" Shale asks. "Different than a statue? Different than a log?" It snorts. "Should I talk in a monotone?" Shale puts on a hideous, flat, grinding voice. "Yes, master. I exist to serve the master. I shall kill for the master and only for the master!" Thank the Maker, it stops then, relaxing into its previous, more natural voice. Marian is a little surprised to realize how much she prefers it to be itself instead of playing at mindlessness. "Perhaps it expected me to have a booming voice? Recite limericks? I can recite limericks, if it likes."

"What sort of limericks does a golem know?" Marian asks curiously.

"Mostly they involve slaughtering pigeons in creative and invasive manners," Shale says.

And they're right back to the awkward silence. Marian's not sure if the whole bird fixation bothers her or not. It's nothing to do with her, not really, since Marian isn't actually a bird, but... 

It's a little odd.

"I have never met another golem," Shale says, breaking the silence. "I have no idea what one might be like, or why I wouldn't be like them. Why do you ask? Has it met other golems? Did they not sound as I do?"

"No," Marian admits. "I – " _I made a completely unsupported assumption and reality's slapping me in the face with it_ is probably not the way to go here. "It wasn't a complaint," Marian says, glancing up at Shale's face. Its glowing eyes are intent on the road, but as Marian looks away, she notices Shale flicking its eyes toward her out of the corner of her eye. "If your impression is anything to go by, I prefer you the way you are."

Shale snorts again. "It thinks I hang on its every word, waiting for its approval?" It shrugs. "I don't know what other golems might be like, but I am already superior by virtue of my free will. This is a good thing."

"A very good thing," Marian agrees. She means every word. The control rod had given her the creeps, once she'd realized Shale had a personality and a will of its own.

"I am also superior to you squishy, organic creatures," it continues, as if she hadn't spoken. "Imagine, no need to eat or sleep or perform other... functions." It sounds so revolted by the very idea that Marian has to bite her lip before she starts laughing. It ignores her. "Walk underwater, crush the heads of every opponent! The possibilities are limitless! Barring the occasional thirty years or so of paralysis, there's little to compare."

"I never thought about it that way," Marian says, doing her best to flatten the amusement out of her voice. She probably failed, though. This is the strangest conversation she's ever had.

"Stop talking so much," Shale says, glaring at her. "The wagging of its moist little tongue is distracting."

Marian covers her face with her hand to hold in the surprised laughter. She drops back in the line, finding a place near the rear and hopefully out of Shale's notice, and then she laughs until tears stand in her eyes.

She doesn't know what it is, whether it's her or the Blight or what, but something is attracting all the weirdest people in Thedas to her side.

She walks into camp that night to find half of her friends already hard at work putting up their tents. Bodahn's got Sandal and Zevran unpacking with him. It must be Zevran's turn at the cooking pot. _Good_ , Marian thinks. Bodahn won't put up with anything from Zevran. It's not that she thinks he'd poison the food. Not anymore. ...Not really.

Maybe a little.

_It's better to be safe, right?_ she tells herself, and turns to dragging the rolled canvas of her tent to an unclaimed spot nearish the fire. This camping spot is surrounded by trees, a thick, old forest that grows dark very quickly as she looks deeper into the underbrush. It's quiet, though, and almost peaceful.

Her tent is little more than ropes supporting waxed canvas. She drives the stakes which hold the ropes in place into the ground with her heel, nudges her packs inside with the toe of her boot, and rounds the side of her tent to head for the campfire.

A long arm reaches out from behind a huge tree and pulls her around. It's Alistair, leaning against the tree, hiding in its shadow. She can't see much more than the edge of his face, the cut of his cheekbones, and the campfire that lights his hair to burnt gold.

She laughs a little, confused and breathless. "Alistair?"

He takes her face in both hands and kisses her hard and desperate, his hot breath washing across her face. She gasps, little more than a sharp, shocked inhalation that he swallows before she kisses him back, as of course she must. Her need rises sharp and hot to meet his, the taste of his mouth and his hands pressing her ever closer to the heat of his body, hungry for the feel of his skin against hers. _Damn_ their armor. 

She takes his upper arms in both hands to balance as she leans up to get a better angle on his mouth. He feels so _good_ , big and warm under her hands, soft and welcoming against her mouth, his tongue stroking hers the way he knows that she likes.

He's never been so single-minded before, so needy and intent. So far she's been the aggressor in their relationship. This is new, and different, and she loves it. He warms her from the inside out. He makes her feel like she's flying. The outside world has gone away, making an intimate little space that's only him, and her, and this thing between them that they stoke with every breath.

She could quite happily stay here forever.

"I couldn't stop thinking about you," he says against her mouth in a low, rough voice that strikes her like a blow. A shiver crawls down her spine, melting back into her body when it reaches the base and electrifying every inch of her. "All day, the whole march – " She kisses him again; she can't help it, but she wants very much to hear what he has to say. She shifts closer, just a little bit, to press herself against every glorious inch of him.

"And what were you thinking of?" She kisses his jaw, and then she opens her mouth over his skin, sucking lightly. He jumps when she uses the tip of her tongue to draw a warm, wet line along his jaw.

His breath is coming very shaky indeed. She likes it. She likes that she can make him feel this way, this way that she feels inside _all the time_. 

"I... I thought about..." But instead of finishing the sentence, he slides his hand up her back and into her hair. He brings her mouth back to his, kissing her until she doesn't know which way is up anymore.

"I thought about the way you sound," Alistair confesses when they come up for air. "That little moan you make in the back of your throat – " Marian frowns at him. She has no idea what he's talking about; she doesn't make noises, not unless she means to. But he can't make out her face in the darkness, and he goes on. "And..." His other hand starts moving downward from her waist, hovering on the slope that begins to form her arse. 

Marian laughs low in her throat and takes his hand. She directs it downward, sliding it over the swell of her arse until he's got a nice, solid grip. He doesn't grab and squeeze, like some men she's known; instead he pulls her closer until she's tucked against him and kisses her again, kisses her like she's the only thing in his universe.

But he leaves his hands right where they are. 

That night, Marian gets herself off three times to the thought of his big, broad hands and the gentle, tentative way he touches her. She laughs a little, breathless from her climaxes, as she stares at the roof of her tent. Maybe there's something to the rumors of Grey Warden prowess after all...


	46. The City Under the Rock

The entrance to Orzammar is in the furthest foothills of the Frostbacks, just before the mountains really begin. It's colder here than in the lowlands, and Marian's grateful for the layers and layers of clothing she's wearing. Hopefully it'll be warmer underground. Bodahn's told her about the cunning ways the dwarves have of heating and cooling their city. She's looking forward to seeing it.

The trail is well-packed dirt, wide enough for Bodahn's wagon twice over. They're making good time. There's a bridge ahead that marks the edge of Orzammar-claimed lands, and after that is the surfacer merchant encampment, Bodahn tells her. He keeps talking, though, on and on, and Marian thinks that perhaps he's more nervous about coming home than he let on. She's sorry for it, of course, but she'd given him plenty of notice. If he'd wanted to stay behind, then he should have said so.

They're approaching the bridge now. Alistair's drawn to the left side of the trail to allow another party to pass, and the rest of them follow suit, like little ducklings all in a row.

But instead of passing by, one of the men narrows his eyes, slowly dragging his eyes from Alistair to Morrigan and down on the line until he reaches Marian. "About time a Warden showed," he says, loudly so that his voice carries across the distance. He grins. "Loghain sends his regards!"

And now they've got weapons in their hands, soldiers all except a mage attacking far, far in the rear. Marian catches her in a cage as soon as she sees her, but the other mage somehow shunts it to the side and away after only a second.

_Damn_.

Marian casts a wild glance around at the rest of the battle – there's five of them, not counting the mage, and two more in the back with bows. Morrigan's taken one out of the equation by simply turning into a spider and sitting on him. He's almost sobbing as he pushes at Morrigan's round, bulbous body, but he can't get the right leverage to get her off him. He must be afraid of spiders.

Marian trades volleys with the other mage, probing for a crack in her defenses she can exploit, but her shields are tight and her reflexes good. They're in a standoff; it takes her far, far too long to think her way out of the problem.

Just because _Marian_ can't get through her shields doesn't mean that nothing can.

Marian throws lighting at the mage's feet, and the ground beneath her explodes, sending dirt and grass and small stones everywhere. The mage stumbles a little, surprised, and Marian quickly catches her in a stasis spell. It should hold her long enough to clear the rest of the field and convince Morrigan to let go of her new toy.

_That_ 's easier said than done, though; the fight takes it out of her, and by the time Marian's managed to convince Morrigan that her soldier is dead, the rest have moved up the road to the merchant camp. Bodahn is already hard at work chatting with the neighboring caravan.

"They knew who we were," Marian says to Alistair, low to keep the others from overhearing. "How do they keep tracking us?"

"If we wanted to be inconspicuous, we should have left the qunari at home," Alistair says, jerking his head at Sten like she doesn't know who he's talking about. "And it's a big country, but there's not a lot of places we can actually _go_. Loghain must have figured out what we're doing by now."

"So we might be up to our necks in bounty hunters from now on?"

Alistair shrugs. "We can handle it, I think. You worry too much."

"Somebody has to," Marian says, unexpectedly stung.

"Hey," Alistair says, tugging on her arm to pull her closer. He looks a little concerned. "I didn't mean it that way. I only meant that enough trouble finds us without you borrowing more."

The problem is, he's not wrong.

A passing merchant points the way to the huge doors in the mountain that lead into the city of Orzammar. The mountain face is sheer here, rising far above their heads to dizzying heights inside of just a few feet. There are guards at the door, of course, but there's also a delegation of humans who are demanding entrance loudly, and in the name of _King_ Loghain.

That's certainly a promotion since last Marian saw Loghain. He'd just been a teyrn then. He's been a busy little thing, hasn't he?

The guard at the door is willing to let her pass after she shows him the treaties, with Orzammar's royal seal at the bottom, but the delegation's head is a puffed popinjay with delusions of his own importance who demands her head on a silver plate. The guard orders them to take their disagreement elsewhere, and Marian is happy to go –

And when the self-important asshole decides to take matters into his own hands, she's very happy to hand him _his_ head, instead. Waste not, want not.

The guards let them through without even a raised eyebrow at the bodies she's just left on their front steps. Once she's in Orzammar, in the heart of it dealing with their politics, it becomes clear to her why that is; bodies in the street are nothing new to the dwarves of Orzammar, over things as large as kingdoms and as small as smoked nugmeat on sticks.

She hates it. The ceilings press down on her like a physical weight, like the watchful eyes of the templars in the Circle; she can't forget for even a moment the sheer weight of all that stone over her head, tons and tons and tons of it. She can't rid herself of the idea that it might come crashing down on a whim. She hates Bhelen and his politics, and the sloppy way he goes about framing Harrowmont as if she won't notice, or worse, as if it doesn't matter if she notices; she hates Harrowmont and his naïve, deeply entitled talk of the way things _ought_ to be. They're both using her and her desperation, and to her that makes them exactly the same.

Marian has deep, _deep_ concerns about involving the Wardens in local politics, concerns that Alistair shares, but neither of them can think of anything else to do. They _need_ the dwarves and their armies and their expertise fighting the darkspawn.

She even asks Zevran. He offers to kill one of them to make her life simpler. She regrets everything.

She sends Alistair back to Harrowmont and tackles Bhelen herself, hoping that she can use her not inconsiderable powers of persuasion to convince him to abide by the Assembly's decision, but he's stuck on some idea he's had about Orzammar's criminal element, and all he wants to hear from Marian is that she'll take care of them for him.

One look at Alistair's face tells her that he's had the same luck she has. "He wants us to do something about that gang in Dust Town," he says to her that night over two mugs of something foul in the tavern.

Marian _hates_ Orzammar.

"That's what Bhelen wants, too." Marian stares down into her mug like it holds the secrets to the Fade and ancient Arlathan. _Why can't anyone just say 'Yes, Warden, we'd be delighted to?'_ "I don't see another choice," she says, glancing up at Alistair. He looks tired. They've been given rooms down here, but they're meant for dwarves, and the beds are short, even for her. She can't imagine that he got much sleep last night.

"If what they're saying is true, the Blight is probably good for them," Alistair says, tipping his mug to watch the stuff – Marian is hesitant to call it ale – slosh around. He looks skeptical. "The darkspawn head up to the surface and the pressure's gone. They could even expand a bit into the Deep Roads, if they could hold what they took when the darkspawn come crawling back."

"We forget that they have to live with the darkspawn every day," she says softly. Marian looks around at the tavern. There aren't that many people here, not as many as she would have expected in a place of this size at night. The commons guard told her that she'd find the market area thin, but busy, and that appears to extend to the tavern, too. Those dwarves who are here are drinking like their lives depend on it. "I hate that we have to ask them to come and fight on the surface, too."

Instead of looking around at the tavern and the dwarves there, Alistair watches her. "But we have to."

"We do." 

Alistair toasts her with his mug, clinking it gently against hers, and takes a larger swallow than she thinks wise. The outrageously disgusted face he makes after he swallows makes her laugh until her face hurts.

\---

The hardest part of tracking down the gang is _finding_ them in the first place. Bodahn professes not to know anything about it, though there's something about the look on his face – Marian's not sure she believes him. They split up again to chase leads; Marian gets sidetracked by a young dwarf who wants to study at the Circle, of all things. She thinks of the ruination of the Tower, of everything that happened there and everyone who died, and she almost refuses to send Dagna to that snake's nest. 

But Marian would be the grossest hypocrite if she tried telling Dagna that the library isn't worth it.

In the end she sends Dagna off with a letter of introduction and enough funds to pay for safe passage in a merchant caravan, which are the only things moving between cities these days. Irving will allow Dagna to stay in a heartbeat. Marian knows him well enough to say that. Underneath all the politics is a man who remembers what it was like to love knowledge for its own sake.

She's stopped again, and again, and only sometimes can she help. And all the while the ceiling presses down on her, catching her out of the corner of her eye, and every time it startles her a little until she remembers where she is, and why the sky is gone. It's getting her back up.

Late in the morning, Marian saves a merchant who tips her off about Dust Town. She has to go all the way to Dust Town to find someone who knows what the fuck is going on. It's not that it's so far in terms of physical distance, but the paradigm shift between the richer mansions literally next door and the absolute poverty is a little hard to swallow. Her companions arrive one at a time, summoned from all over the city by runners, but she immediately loses Leliana again to the dwarf across the way with a pile of nugs around him, and Wynne is talking to a very young, distraught woman with an infant.

Alistair turns the corner between her and the main entrance – she catches his armor out of the corner of her eye – and he grimaces. "Let me guess, this is where the poor people live?" He's got their purse, and with it Marian pays Nadezda off. 

Wynne dips her hand in while Marian has the purse open, and something in the set expression on her face discourages Marian from asking any questions. She goes back to the girl with the baby. Marian wishes she'd known that's who the money was for; she would have made Wynne take more. This is why Alistair is in charge of the purse.

Now, where is she going to find carta members down here?

Completely contrary to her assumptions, there are no gang members here, not anywhere. They wander the alleys for an hour, sometimes talking to beggars who have nothing for them but cursing, and still no one even comes out of the woodwork to attack them. 

This is so alien to her that she has no idea what to do.

In the end she starts knocking on doors; most of them don't answer, either empty or avoiding her, but the last door on the street opens at her touch. She finds the trouble she was looking for, and the key, and when the gang members beg for their lives, what else can she say but they're free to go?

At least she gets directions out of them before they disappear. 

Using the finger-bone key, they're passed through the door they're directed to, the third door on the right. Jarvia's headquarters lie underground in a network of tiny rooms and unfinished tunnels. They're attacked every time they gain any ground by mobs of dwarves and archers and even a few Qunari – how do they not knock their heads in every tunnel? Marian wonders – and even an area with the huge spiders and small lizard things with frightening sucker maws full of teeth that the dwarves seem to have tamed.

_Ew_.

"You picked the wrong side, stranger," Jarvia tells her when they finally reach the heavily guarded door at the far reaches of the dungeon, miles and miles under the surface, buried in rock and lava and dead bodies. "It doesn't matter who's king, as long as there's a queen."

Marian tries, she really does, but Jarvia is spoiling for a fight. Her men explode into action. There are quite a few of them, and they are both well-practiced at their trade and used to fighting in a team. Jarvia is tough, and sneaky, and wickedly good with her daggers; she keeps Alistair on his toes, avoiding his heavier swings and slicing in with her daggers when he's even the least little bit distracted. Marian's got her hands full keeping Jarvia's henchmen at bay and thank the Maker that Wynne is there to handle the healing.

_It won't be easy_ , Nadezda told her, and as always that was an understatement.

Jarvia presses her advantage, pushing Alistair back one step, then two and three in a whirlwind of motion. Cú can't get in close to even nip at her heels. She can hear him growling in frustration all the way across the room. The sound has been known to scare grown men, but Jarvia ignores him, like it's just her and Alistair.

Too late, Marian recognizes the intricate dance they're doing. Alistair is being herded.

Alistair takes one more careful step backward and triggers a fire trap that sends him flying across the room. He's unconscious when he lands. His head lolls sickeningly. "No," Marian says, her heart in her throat; she's quiet in the sound and the fury that's brewing here right now, but Leliana hears her anyway. 

"Wake up!" Leliana hisses. Only then does she realize she's been staring at Alistair's body on the ground, instead of doing _anything_ – She crosses the room so fast that it feels like magic. Wynne is there already, putting out the fires that lick over his armor, hungrily looking for something that will burn, like flesh.

Marian feels nauseous. 

Wynne is doing everything she can, which is more than Marian can do, so – she turns to scan the room for Jarvia. Cú is keeping her busy and away from the rest.

Wait. Is there enough room – Marian tries to estimate distances, and scale. It might work. It's a desperation move, but she's feeling desperate. If Cú can hold Jarvia where she is...

Calling the elements in such a small place, under circumstances like these and feeling the way she does – terrified, upset, infuriated – is a recipe for disaster, or demons, or both, but tactically she's never had such a clear space in which to do her damnedest. She thinks of the sharp, clear chill of the Frostbacks in that icy temple behind Haven, the smell of snow and the howls of gusting wind, and then she touches magic to her thoughts like tinder to a flame. 

It's always warm down in the depths of Orzammar, so the first stir of the air, the first chill, has a few of the dwarves slowing to look around. By then, of course, it's too late, even if they'd known where to look – Marian's let loose the storm. There's no calling it back to her hands now. The winds pick up, and then the snow and the ice materialize out of thin air, blowing around the room in an endless circle that doesn't quite touch her where she's standing guard over Alistair, or Leliana across the room. It seems to swirl more aggressively around the dwarves, and most of all around Jarvia, who is shielding her face with one hand. Encouraged, Marian feeds it more magic. Now the dwarves are having noticeable problems moving, like they're fighting through true winter winds, but Leliana seems to have no difficulty aiming through the tumult. She nails several of them in the eye before Marian has to let go of the spell.

She takes a second to look at the destruction she's wrought: the room is _wrecked_ , splinters of wood everywhere, the remnants of what used to be furniture or barrels or chests. Even some of the pillars are showing damage.

That's one to remember, then. 

Jarvia is still up, but moving slowly, and it's nothing to set a cage of pain around her. It's too easy, in fact. Marian wants her to hurt for what she did to Alistair. She needs to hold herself hard here, because she's getting too emotional, and it's exactly what the demons feed upon. She leaves Jarvia to Cú and takes the time to make sure she finishes off all the other dwarves. 

Wynne sits back on her heels with a sigh. She's tired, but not unhappy. "He'll be all right," she says to Marian's enquiring glance. "He's had a nasty knock on the head, that's all. He'll wake up when he's ready." Alistair really does look better; his armor is still a bit scorched around the edges, but the burns on the back of his neck and the edges of his face are gone, and his color is good. He could be sleeping.

"I hope that's soon," she says, laughing just a little, giddy with relief. "I don't think any of us are up to carrying him."

They loot the room while they wait; Leliana finds quite a nice emerald in the back room that Marian earmarks for a special project, but there's plenty to go around, and to recoup what they'd spread around Dust Town. The carta's been stealing from their own long enough. It's time they paid back what they owe.

When Alistair wakes, he just sighs a little, a quiet groan that tugs at her heartstrings. 

"Morning, lazybones," Marian says, leaning over him. She wishes she had a smile for him, but she's still a little shaken. If he'd been truly hurt...

He groans again, a little louder, as he touches his head. "I take it we won? Ugh, my bruises have bruises."

"There was an explosion."

Alistair sighs and lets his head drop back against the floor. "Of course. An explosion. Why didn't I think of that?"

But he has to get up, because after all they are still in Dust Town and it's not safe here, not with spiders and lizard things and maybe more carta members coming around the bend. She chivvies Alistair into standing, and he groans all the while, but once he's up he moves better. They go out through the escape route, rather than backtracking all the way through the maze, which dumps them out in a little shop on the Commons. 

They're a bit of a shock to the poor storekeeper – looking at her and her companions, dusty, bloody and weary the lot of them, Marian can understand why he orders them from his store immediately. She waves Alistair and Leliana off to talk to Harrowmont and goes back to Bhelen; he's far more suspicious this time, since he's heard of Alistair's efforts on Harrowmont's behalf, but she manages to talk him around. 

She regrets it almost immediately.

"You want me to descend into the depths of the darkspawn-infested Deep Roads and find a woman you haven't heard from in two years. In the incredibly unlikely event that she's still alive, you want me to somehow bring her back from whatever she might be doing down there _surrounded by darkspawn,_ and then convince her to appoint you king," Marian says slowly, packing her words with every inch of the incredulity she feels. She cannot believe the effrontery that it takes him to ask this of her. "And you want me to do this in _two days_."

"A tall order," Bhelen says. "But it's what I need, and you will have none of our armies without _someone_ on the throne. And if this voting drags on too long, everything you've done will be for nothing." 

Marian can feel a muscle in her jaw taut and flickering with the force with which she's grinding her teeth. When she feels that her temper's under control, she says, "I must consult with my fellow Warden."

He doesn't stop her when she turns on her heel and walks out. 

Comparing notes with Alistair, it's clear that again Bhelen and Harrowmont have had the same bright idea. She wonders if someone is in both camps, feeding them ideas. It would have been ideal if she'd thought of it earlier, and so headed this off at the pass, but sadly prescience has passed her by. 

Even if they wanted to – which neither of them do – there's no way they could accomplish all of this in two days. Leliana points out that even if voting _starts_ in two days, it doesn't have to end there, and so Marian and Alistair trudge back to their respective factions to negotiate. Bhelen is oddly cheerful about agreeing to delay the voting as long as he can; Marian suspects that he has some sort of backup plan up his sleeve, but for once in her life, she doesn't want to know. 

Then it's back up to the surface to inform the rest of their group about the change in plans. "I can't ask any of you to go with us," Marian says to her assembled companions when she's done explaining the situation. "We don't know what else might be down there, not really, but it's bound to be packed with darkspawn. Alistair and I have to go." She glances at Alistair, who gives her a ghost of a smile, which she returns in kind. "But it's far more risky for the rest of you." 

Every last one of them bursts into speech, bless them; she can hear Leliana's voice peaking over the rest and even Zevran protests being left behind.

"It is not going anywhere without me." Shale's pronouncement carries the weight of its stone with it.

She's a little startled about it, actually. "Shale?" 

But Shale declines to say anything else, and Marian is left with choosing the last person. She wants to keep the numbers to a minimum; she's not sure what the tunnels of the Deep Roads look like, but if they're tight and close she wants to keep their party small. The more people they take, the more supplies they'll have to hump. In the end she chooses Leliana; she'll miss Wynne's healing, but Wynne is too old for Marian to be comfortable dragging her so far into the bowels of the earth.

Morrigan turns away, sour irritation written in the lines of her face, and Marian hides a smile.

No one's sure how long they're going to be gone, and so they discuss several hypothetical situations and what Bodahn and the rest should do then; Alistair hands most of their money over to Wynne to use while they live on the surface, and Marian pins Zevran with several explicit instructions he's to obey while she's gone.

There is to be absolutely no murdering. None. Zevran laughs and calls her a spoilsport, and then he wonders why she worries.

Bodahn assures her that they'll be all right where they are, at least as long as the money lasts them. They're to leave in the morning, which means nothing underground but Marian wants to sleep one more night under the open sky. She hadn't realized quite how tight and tense her shoulders had been until she'd walked out of Orzammar's doors and her entire body sighed in relief. 

She stands under the scanty pines that ring the merchant camp, staring up at the stars. She'd done this often when she was small, with her father pointing out some of the bigger ones and telling her the names they go by in the different countries. She's long since forgotten what the names were, but not what the moment felt like, cuddling into her father's warm side, his deep voice washing over her as she greedily soaks up everything he has to tell her...

Marian sighs. She misses him. 

She turns and goes back to her tent, where Cú is waiting. 

The next morning, Bodahn passes them a few supplies he'd managed to dig up. "It's enough for a week, or two if you're supplementing with other things," he says, creases in his forehead. "I seem to recall the Legions have something... I'm not sure what, but you might want to ask."

"Thanks, Bodahn," Marian says, grateful. "Take care of them."

They head directly for the entrance to the Deep Roads after that, but a dwarf steps into her path before they get there. He's a square, burly dwarf with wild red hair – he's the first redhead she's seen down here –and a short beard. He wears full armor, and a sword taller than he is, but many of the dwarves down here walk around wearing as much or more. Orzammar isn't safe. 

"Stranger! Have you seen a Grey Warden hereabouts? I've been privy to the rumor that he... or was it she – you understand this was many mugs ago – was searching for Branka on Lord Harrowmont's own command." His voice is deep and gravelly, but also slurred. It sounds like he's had one too many already.

"We're Grey Wardens," Marian admits. The smell is truly appalling, something of old socks and dirt, unwashed person and stale alcohol. She leans back on the balls of her feet to get another inch of precious air between them. She wishes she didn't have to, but one look at her or Alistair ought to tell the dwarf what they are.

The dwarf gives her a long, considering look, a thorough and appalling up-and-down, then laughs right out loud. Marian wonders if he's trying to be offensive, or if it just comes naturally. "Well, if you're the best they've got, then standards must have fallen way down. But I suppose that would account for a human in Orzammar." He looks at her a moment more, weighing his options, then sighs. "Say, could I ask you a favor?"

Marian shakes her head. "I have no time to help you, I'm sorry. We're on something of a tight schedule." With that, she makes to go around him.

"Wait," he says, and in fact nearly bellows. A few curious heads turn, but when they see the dwarf Marian talks to, they turn back, most rolling their eyes or shaking their heads. This dwarf seems to have something of a reputation. "Name's Oghren, and if you've ever heard of me before, it's probably all been about how I piss ale and kill little boys who look at me wrong; that's... mostly true, but the part they never say is how I'm the only one still trying to save our _only_ Paragon. And if you're looking for Branka, I'm the only one who knows what she was looking for, which might be pretty sodding helpful in finding her." 

Wait. What?

"How do you know what we're looking for?" Marian asks, baffled. "And how do you know what _she_ was looking for?"

"Tavern talk," the dwarf says succinctly. Given Orzammar and the way the dwarves like to drink, that is a reasonable explanation, Marian thinks. Oghren belches, and somehow the smell is _worse_ , which was something Marian wouldn't have been able to imagine before and wishes she could now forget. "I know what Branka wanted and I know how she was looking. You, I assume, know whatever Harrowmont's men have dug up on where exactly she disappeared. If we pool our knowledge, we stand a chance of finding Branka." Oghren shrugs. "Otherwise, good sodding luck." 

If his information is good... it's not a bad idea, honestly. If she can make him take a bath. Marian glances at Alistair, who nods. 

"Fine," she says. "Talk."

"Oh no," Oghren says, frowning. He looks a little like an irritated bottle brush. "We're going. All of us. Together."

This is more of a quandary; Oghren is a dwarf, and with that sword on his back, he's obviously a fighter. He knows where Branka was going and what she was looking for. He's presumably got more experience with the Deep Roads than any of them.

On the other hand, she doesn't know him from a hole in the ground, and he might be crazy or a murderer; they don't have the provisions for five, so she'd have to send Leliana back; also, he smells like something that crawled into a distillery and died there. She does not enjoy the idea of spending who knows how long crammed into a tight tunnel with him. 

But if it's between the smell that's crawling into her throat bodily or _knowing_ where to look, then there's only one choice. And besides, probably Shale would enjoy popping his head like a grape if Marian asked it to.

Leliana is not happy about it, but Marian calms her objections before sending her back to the world, back to the others. "Keep them out of trouble?" she asks Leliana, squeezing her hand. It's Zevran she's worried about. He seems like the sort of person who gets bored. Leliana agrees and Marian turns back to Oghren instead of watching Leliana leave. "Perhaps now you'll tell us where we ought to go?"

For the first time, Oghren looks sort of uncertain. _If he doesn't actually know_... Marian is thinking about dropping him into Orzammar's lava pits before Oghren actually opens his mouth. "You should know that Branka was looking for the Anvil of the Void, the secret to building golems, which was lost centuries ago. The smith Caridin built it, and with it, Orzammar had a hundred years of peace, while it was protected by the golems forged on the anvil. As far as anyone knows, the Anvil was built in the old Ortan Thaig. Branka planned to start looking there, _if_ she could ever find it. All she knew was that it was past Caridin's Cross. No one's seen that thaig for five hundred years."

Marian thinks about that. It's less of a lead than she'd hoped for, but she has other details on where Ortan Thaig might be from a girl she'd met in the Shaperate; it's much, much better than what she'd had before, which was nothing. 

"How do you know all this?" Alistair asks. 

"We were sodding _married_ until she left me and took our whole house into the Deep Roads on her mad quest for the Anvil," Oghren growls. "It was a stupid move. If I'd been with her, she'd have made it back years ago. But I forgive her."

Somehow Marian thinks that Branka has no use for Oghren's forgiveness; if she left him behind while she took the whole rest of her house, that's a rather scathing indictment of either Oghren's ability or of her feelings.

"Putting that aside for the moment," Marian says. "I hope you're ready to go. I don't want to wait while you fetch your things."

Oghren snorts, eloquently conveying what he thinks of _that_ idea. "If we're going, let's get moving," he says, turning toward the entrance to the Deep Roads. He has a few small packs on his back, slung low; she couldn't see them until he turned around. That answers that. "Once we're there, I should be able to pick up Branka's trail, no trouble."

Shale has been very, very quiet, following the conversation without any of its usual sarcastic, squishy remarks. She doesn't know it well, but that's strange.

With only a little trouble caused by Oghren's overlarge mouth, they're passed through the guard post at the edge of the Deep Roads, and then they're on their own.


	47. The Deep Roads

The Deep Roads are _huge_. They're built on dwarven scale, which means that they could fit an army in one room with room to spare, and they go up just as high, capped in tall, vaulted ceilings. Here, so close to Orzammar, the way is clear in terms of darkspawn, but there are places where the Roads have been blocked by rockfalls or other debris. When that happens, they have to find passages around. Most of those passages have been carved out of bare rock, or sometimes they're short tunnels connecting natural bubble formations.

Only once do they discover that Shale is too large for the opening between two sections. It solves that problem by punching out an extra two feet of doorway and just walking through.

Marian risks a glance at the roof of the tunnel, but nothing's cracking or falling or crushing them. Not yet. She sighs.

It's also eerily quiet down here. There's only their own footsteps, the rocks they disturb as they pass, the jingling of their gear. Marian has gotten used to the sounds of the road over the last few months. Up there, this sort of quiet usually means they're about to be ambushed. It's not helping her nerves.

Oghren leads them, and for now it seems he knows where he's going, so Marian leaves him to it. 

The ceilings are high, it's true, but they're lower than they were in Orzammar. She feels hemmed in, claustrophobic; she wraps her arms around herself as they walk, like she can make herself smaller than she already is. It doesn't help. Shale's heavy footsteps behind her don't make her feel any better, either, since it makes her wonder exactly how the rockfalls were caused, and whether they ought to be watching where they step, or keeping their voices down. 

They walk for most of a day before Oghren starts to pause at junctions. Marian resists the urge to ask him if he actually knows where he's going; it'll only irritate him. They're not backtracking or running into dead ends. Whatever he's doing, however he's helping himself to remember, it's working.

They make camp that night in a little alcove off to the side of the road, a little cave whose entrance they can partially block. Since Shale doesn't need to sleep, Marian asks it to keep watch so they can get as much rest as they're able; it agrees with a minimum of put-upon grumbling.

"We're going to have to refill the water skins tomorrow," she says, thinking of their provisions; they're each carrying a small and a large waterskin, but apparently people drink quite a lot more water than she'd realized. 

Oghren shrugs. "Sure."

She waits, but that's all he says. "We'll be able to fill up somewhere?" she asks, when she can't stand the silence anymore.

"Uh-huh."

Marian gives up on him, and talking, and lies down nearish the fire with her head on Cú's back. He rumbles a little bit, but then he puts his head down and goes back to sleep, allowing Marian to use him as a pillow. _Good dog_.

She's surprisingly tired for doing nothing but walking all day. Drowsily, she watches Alistair across the campfire until she falls asleep.

\---

Alistair shakes her awake the next morning – at least, she thinks it's morning. It's hard to tell down here, without the sun and the sky. 

Marian wishes she hadn't slept in her armor. She gets up and stretches, rolling her shoulders and twisting side to side, trying to work out the stiffness. When she looks up, she catches Alistair watching her with interest, and if she's not mistaken, with want as well. She smiles at him, a knowing smile, one that makes his ears go red at the tips. She wants to go over, to kiss him, but... No. Not in front of Oghren. Instead she picks up her packs, and just like that, she's ready to go.

They leave the fire set and ready for the next travelers, and move on. A few hours pass before Oghren directs them off the road and behind an old, old rockfall. A small, well-used path has been worn into the stone. 

Again, Shale doesn't fit. Marian stops it from clearing the path this time, fearing what disturbing such an old and well-settled rockslide might do.

The path isn't long. At the end, there's a small crack in the rock from which trickles a little water. It sheets down the rock face and collects into a pool at the bottom. Marian cups her hand and catches a little; it's clear and cool, and when she drinks it, it proves to be sweet, too.

She asks Oghren about it while they're filling their skins. "It's been here a long time," he says in his deep voice, though he doesn't sound particularly interested. "Longer than I've been alive, anyway. It happens sometimes. There's water in the rock, and it's got to go somewhere."

But how the water got there in the first place isn't something he was ever curious about, nor is he interested in telling her how he knows where they are. He _is_ willing to tell her that there are more springs scattered throughout the Deep Roads. "Though not all of them are this nice," he says. "I hope you like the taste of lichen." He chuckles when her face drops.

At least they won't go wanting for water. 

They travel for three more days in more or less a straight line. Once they have to take a long detour around a section of the Roads that caved in long ago due to darkspawn digging underneath to undermine the path. There's not always a neat alcove available when Oghren decides that it's time to stop, but there's usually something of a firepit, and a way to make it defensible. 

Marian asks Oghren once how he knows when it's nighttime, and he looks at her like she has three heads. "Because it _is_ nighttime," he says. "What, how do _you_ – No, you know what? Nevermind." Then he stomps off muttering about surfacers, heading for the alcohol in his pack that he thinks she hasn't noticed yet. He doesn't think much of her questions, that much is sure. 

On the fourth day, the darkspawn attack. 

She's felt them since the first night, but in a vague, general way which means that they're not very close, according to Alistair. The feeling varies in strength, waxing and waning like the moon but never growing to that level at which they're immediately nearby. This is probably just something she's going to have to get used to down here, something else she hates but must get used to, like everything else down here. 

She tries not to think about it too much.

But then it sneaks up on her; she gags a little before she can suppress the automatic reaction of her body. There's six or seven of them in a pack, three with crossbows, and one of the short, fat magic-users in the back. She's spread too thin to do more than cage him in a pain spell and hope that finishes him off; the others need healing, and she's got to keep something back for emergencies.

Oghren fights like a madman. He snarls at the darkspawn, hurling himself into the middle of everything and swinging his battleaxe, the one that's nearly taller than he is, in huge, vicious strokes that takes chunks out of whatever it hits, whether it be darkspawn or himself. Marian expects him to start frothing at the mouth next, like the old tales of berserkers from the mountains who'd go into blood rages and kill and kill until they ran out of strength or enemies to feed the rage. It's hard to tell when he's injured, too, when he's covered in darkspawn blood. Marian's used to Alistair now, and she knows when he's lagging and when he's injured; Shale is tough enough that Marian doesn't worry about her too much, but Oghren – She tosses healing spells his way when she gets the chance and hopes that's enough. 

It's not a very tough fight, in the end, and the hardest part about it is that afterward, Oghren is literally covered in darkspawn blood. When Marian mentions it, he just shrugs and trudges on, though she catches him wiping his face clean with the trailing end of his beard when he thinks they're not looking. 

It's another week to Caridin's Cross. Oghren's cheerful warning turns out to be true: not all the springs are so clear as the first. She's soon got an aftertaste in her mouth that doesn't seem to fade. Lichen is _revolting_. Their trail food isn't much better, but at least it's something. She has no idea what they'll do when it runs out.

The claustrophobia has not abated one bit. 

Before her, Oghren slows and then stops, squinting at something she can't see above their heads. "Ah," he breathes. "Caridin's Cross! I can't believe they actually tracked this place down. This used to be one of the biggest crossroads in the empire." He looks around, awestruck at what Marian can only see as yet more of the Deep Roads, just like the rest. But she knows that this place has been lost to the darkspawn for many years. What might this have been, when the dwarven empire was at its height and trade roared between their far-flung cities?

So much was lost when the Blight came to Thedas. Marian hates every minute that she's down here and locked away from the open sky, but even she can admit that the Deep Roads are beautiful, made well and strong to last over thousands of years. They're worth reclaiming, if it could be done. 

She regrets again that she needs the dwarven armies to beat back the Blight on the surface, only to drive the darkspawn back below ground... where the dwarves will go straight back to their daily warfare. There are no choices here, only hard truths.

This is a mental path that has worn itself into her thoughts in the last two weeks, and she's tired of it. "It's beautiful," she says out loud. 

"You could get _any_ where from here," Oghren says, still in that awestruck, slightly wistful voice. "Including Ortan Thaig."

Marian is relieved to hear it. "Then we're not lost?" 

"Pfah," Oghren says, dismissing her concerns. "Course not." He looks back at that thing he was examining earlier. Trail marks? The dwarves of old must somehow have been able to tell the different parts of the Deep Roads apart. She'll ask him later. "Branka dug up some maps of the ancient empire. It's a little tough to tell with so much of it collapsed now, but near as I can figure we're on the right path to Ortan Thaig."

"All right, then. After you," she says.

Oghren laughs. "I've been waiting for someone to say that for two sodding years."

But they're ambushed before they can move on, by a couple of dwarves and another of those elven mages who can be so tricky. Do they hire themselves out in packs? Marian's seen more of them down here in the Deep Roads than up in the air, where they belong.

They're finished and healed and on their way quickly. Whoever sent them probably ought to have sent more. The dwarves have some provisions on them, thank the Maker; she stows them away for later.

Shale has found its voice again, though Marian is torn on whether that's a good thing or not; it begins to needle Oghren, making pointed observations on his personal habits and hygiene. She catches Alistair smothering a laugh more than once. 

All right, it's not just Alistair. She's had to bite her lip, too. Shale has quite a way with words. 

There's more darkspawn before they get to the crossroads, at first just a scattered few who are easy to kill if they're careful about which ones see them; but then a huge pack are suddenly there behind them, like they've risen up out of solid rock, and in all the distraction and fighting she doesn't notice that there are even more of them to the left until something punches her in her side.

She looks down. Suddenly there's a darkspawn arrow in her side where no arrow should be. It doesn't hurt yet; she feels numb instead. She knows it will start to hurt as soon as the shock wears off. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she notices Alistair staggering and as if by instinct, she heals him and then freezes his opponent and knocks it into another darkspawn in a burst of spells that leaves her panting. The archers are clumped up, so that means she can use an area spell... as soon as she gets her breath back, that is. She watches herself going through the motions, instincts kicking in that she didn't even know she had.

The darkspawn are many, but none of them are very tough or powerful, and it doesn't take long to kill the rest. Alistair comes toward her as soon as he notices what's wrong, concern all over his face. Marian leans on him while she tells Shale to pull out the arrow. It helps, at least a little, to have him there while the pain screams through her. She feels that pain all day, even after she manages to focus enough of her mind to draw something from the Fade and heal herself; the lingering, phantom pain will stay with her for a while. She remembers that from Ostagar. Her simple healing spell does nothing for the mind.

And so, distracted as she is, she is completely unprepared for the ogre bearing down on them. It's had time to build up to speed, pushing itself across the cavern with powerful strides, tilting its head down to ram them with the massive, wicked horns that grow in absurdly graceful spirals several feet long.

Alistair and Shale break its charge with their bodies, and Oghren is there, bellowing defiance, all while Cú circles around to snap at its heels. Again the curious detachment kicks in, and her instincts take over: crushing prison, ice, stun... She looks around to check if anyone needs healing and when they don't, she turns her attention back to the ogre.

It's already dead.

Marian stares at it, not quite believing her eyes, but it doesn't move, no matter how long she watches. 

It's hard to believe that it could be over that quickly. She remembers the ogre at Ostagar, and how easily and quickly it killed, and how much it took them to kill it. She looks around for Alistair, and finds him eyeing the ogre's corpse, as well. She sidles over and takes his hand.

It's only been a few months since Ostagar, but already that feels like a lifetime ago. She has trouble remembering who she was before that. 

Marian lets Alistair tug her away. They have to be getting on. Oghren swears up and down that the main crossroads ought to be close. 

Around every corner is something new: here is a huge animal with horns that Oghren calls a bronto, which Marian has to drag Cú away from eating; there a tall, thin, twisted, and impossibly fast darkspawn that Alistair calls a shriek, the darkspawn's version of an elf; then a darkspawn mage who uses some kind of paralysis spell on all of them in the middle of combat, leaving them helpless. Then there's _another_ ogre around the corner with a pack of shrieks, and Oghren goes down, and it's all she can do to keep Shale in one piece... 

Marian hates this, would much rather believe that they're prepared and capable of taking on anything down here. It might even be true. It... it just doesn't feel like that right now. 

When they finally join back up with the Road they camp, and Marian does not have it in her to give a damn what Oghren thinks; instead she lays her roll out right next to Alistair's and dares anyone to say anything about it. 

Late the next day, Oghren squints at what looks like just another part of the Deep Roads to her and says, deep satisfaction in his voice, "This looks like the right way out."

"Thank the Maker," Alistair says. Marian agrees. At least they're getting somewhere for their trouble. She hopes it's close; their food situation is never far from her mind, even if Oghren seems unconcerned. Marian is not quite sure he realizes how much she and Alistair eat. Cú is subsisting on the small, revolting lizards that Oghren calls _tezpadam_ , deep stalkers. Luckily there's no shortage of _those_ down here, but... 

It's three days to Ortan Thaig. They come across darkspawn here and there, and once a group of dwarves who Oghren identifies as looters, but they see more rats than anything else. They can't let their guard down, though, and Marian can't relax, so she's exhausted every time they stop. Alistair is tired, too, though he's used to years of heavy marches in templar training camp, and Oghren is drunk off his head every time she looks, so she stops looking. 

Shale watches them while they sleep, as always. It unnerves Alistair when Shale mentions counting his breaths. Marian thinks that's fair. She's a little unnerved, too.

Then one day, Oghren slows, examining the walls with great care. "Ha!" he crows, startling Cú a little. "I can see Branka all over this place. She always took chips from the walls at regular intervals when she was in a new tunnel – check their composition." He takes a few steps forward, looking around curiously. "By the tits of my ancestors, Ortan Thaig," Oghren says. He sounds as excited as he ever gets. "I never thought I'd see this place in the flesh."

"Do you think Branka might still be here, somewhere?" Marian asks.

"Nah. If she was still here, she'd have sentries out by now." 

"So, what exactly are we looking for, then?" Alistair says, looking around. There's not much to see, honestly. It looks like every other section of the Deep Roads here. But now that Oghren's pointed it out, Marian can see the regular pockmarks in the wall, about every six feet or when the stone changes to bare rock. "We'll follow her chips first," Marian says. "And then, if we must, we'll improvise."

"At least we're good at that," Alistair says, almost grumbling, but he moves when she pokes him in the side.

Marian convinces Oghren to tell her a little about dwarven history as they go, about which he knows more than she expected. There's darkspawn corpses, and then the spiders who killed them, and in all the confusion she doesn't pay Shale or Alistair a jot of attention until Shale starts in on him. 

"It has become very close with the other Grey Warden."

The hair on the back of her neck stands up. Should she look? Or is it better to pretend she can't hear them? She wishes she were in Antiva right now, or wasted Anderfels. Anywhere would be better than here, listening to people talk about her like she's not within earshot.

"Er..." Alistair sounds startled. "Yes, I suppose I have, at that." 

A pause; Marian finds it hard not to picture Shale eyeing Alistair much as it did when it inadvertently stepped in a pile of Cú's droppings. "I find this difficult to comprehend. It is whiny and weak and constantly laughing." 

As if rubbing it in, Alistair laughs. "Then I guess a romance between you and I is completely out of the question, huh?" 

"And the attempts at humor. I cannot understand how it is endured."

Marian _loves_ that Alistair makes her laugh. She resolves to tell him so at the earliest opportunity. 

"Well, maybe you should ask her why she likes me so much, instead of bothering me with it." He sounds a little grumpy now... Marian wonders if either of them will notice if she starts quietly moving away, down the tunnel. Like Leliana, she'll be silent smoke.

Shale grunts. It doesn't sound happy. Why it prompted this conversation, Marian has no idea. "It has a loud mouth," it says. "Why its head has not been crushed already is hard to imagine."

"Or maybe you just happen to figure she likes _me_ a lot more than _you_." 

"Don't be foolish," Shale grumbles.

Alistair laughs again. "Yes, I thought so. Just watch your step! Or I'm totally telling." He's good-humored again, now that he's got the upper hand. Marian can't help but peek at them over her shoulder; she'd meant only a quick glance, to watch Alistair laugh and nothing more, but he catches her looking and smiles... 

He's damned distracting when he wants to be.

As for Shale, if looks could kill... "I am going to stand over here, now," it announces, and suits action to words. 

Ortan Thaig is huge and heavy, carved whole out of an enormous cavern, straddling a rare underground river with thick, solid bridges. There are soaring natural rock formations that look like they're part of the city, instead of being removed or covered up. Everything is so old, and yet some of the houses look like they were only abandoned yesterday. Marian drifts toward a group of Paragon statues and regrets it immediately when spiders drop on her head.

There are spiders _everywhere_. Where there aren't spiders, or stone golems larger and less amusing than Shale, there are darkspawn, and once or twice something that Marian is afraid to call ghosts. She can't really wander the way she'd like to, to examine everything that catches at her curiosity.

But even Shale notices the wholly corporeal dwarf crouching over dead darkspawn, who gasps when he sees them, and flees down a tunnel carved into the bare rock. He turns a corner and disappears out of sight. 

Marian takes an immediate step to follow, then hesitates, thinking better of it; it's probably safer not to go, honestly, but... She glances at Alistair, not for permission but just to check, and he nods. 

She just wants to help. Sometimes they can. 

The little dwarf comes back before they've taken more than three steps into the tunnel and spews anger and vileness at them. Oghren takes one look at him and the situation and sums him up immediately. "Word has it you can only survive down here by eating the darkspawn dead," he says, biting off his words like he doesn't enjoy the taste of them. "It brings the taint. Turns their brains to sewage, but it hides them from the darkspawn."

Oh no. Oh, _no_. But it's true that there's something off about him, about his posture and his speech, and the way that he watches her with wary, animal suspicion when he's not accusing her of stealing his treasures. She soothes him, her heart sick and pity choking her throat, and creeps a little closer to his fire. The black splotches are clear now, under his eyes and running down the side of his face and throat. His eyes are silvery. He's got the taint. 

He calls himself Ruck. Marian remembers the name; she met his mother praying for his fate, back up in the world. She swallows.

The camp looks like Branka's, or so says Oghren. She asks Ruck about them, but all she can get out of him is something about the great crawler nest, the place with the eggs. She can't get anything more out of him than that. He doesn't want to talk about the darkspawn, or what he's doing down here, or how he survives. Nor does he want to talk about his mother; he cries at the thought of her, and begs Marian not to tell her what's happened, what he did.

She ought to take her little knife and put it through the base of his skull and put him out of his misery. He will be a darkspawn himself soon enough, and then she or some other Warden will have one more enemy to deal with. She's a Warden. This is her _job_. But it seems like the height of cruelty, adding insult to injury, to rob him of life when he's already lost everything that makes it worth living. 

Marian leaves him here, in this nightmare he's made for himself.

\---

Ortan Thaig offers up its secrets slowly, grudging every step they take. For all they've been fighting spiders for a week straight, now, when she needs them, they can't find a single one. 

In unspoken agreement, they retreat quite a ways before the boundaries of Ortan Thaig to make camp for that night. No one wants to sleep near Rusk, not even Shale. 

It's three days of cautious exploration before Cú barks and tears off toward the furthest edge of the thaig. Once she knows where to look, Marian can see the spinneret of one of the huge spiders before it whisks its way around a corner and out of sight. They give chase, running down a tunnel without heed for care or caution, but the spider's gone before they can catch up. Marian calls Cú back to her with a short, sharp whistle. This feels like a trap. Alistair catches the mood, too; he pushes his way in front, leading with his shield. 

Oh, how she wishes they had someone who knew what a trap looked like. Leliana would be very welcome right now. Marian misses her.

But then there's nothing, not in the next five meters, nor in the next fifty. A couple of darkspawn try their luck, but they're easily done; it's not what she expected. Puzzlement grows in her mind as they keep following the cavern, and at every turn find nothing. They cross a bridge, and pass into another cave – Oghren confirms that they're well out of Ortan Thaig now – and this place is as empty as the first.

Alistair looks back at her, over his shoulder, and she shrugs. Maybe they're imagining things. Maybe the spiders ran because they've finally learned caution. 

There's a space here, a round bit of cave like a giant with huge hands scooped the rock away long ago. There are webs, here, miles and miles of them in sticky clouds all over the walls and the ceiling; they stick to her boots and the butt of her staff, to Cú's paws, they're tangled in Oghren's beard and scraps float through the air currents to lunge at their faces. Hanging from the webs are clumps of huge, gravid egg sacs that drip in long strings from the ceiling.

"The nest?" Marian wonders out loud.

She regrets it instantly. Hissing echoes from every corner and three spiders drop from the ceiling, somehow hidden from sight in the webs until now. Two are normal – _normal!_ Marian echoes with an insane giggle in her mind – but the third is bigger than any spider she's ever seen, even down here, larger than she is with a huge, rotund spinneret and painted with bright, deadly colors. It's poisonous, then. _Lovely_.

They kill the two normal spiders handily, but the biggest spider calls more before retreating into the webs swathing the walls. This has to be the nest. That makes it... the queen? It's hard not to think of it in those terms, not when it's hovering defensively in front of the egg sacs, using spitting poison attacks to keep them away. 

Marian would almost feel bad if they weren't _spiders_.

It's not impossible to kill the queen while it's encasing them all in webs every time they turn around, but it seems that way. She's mobile, and her longer-ranged attacks are painful, but she's not actually physically hitting them all that hard. She must be used to having soldier spiders to defend her.

Marian feels an unexpected and wholly unwelcome burst of pity for it. 

Oghren kills her in the end, a lucky strike that lodges his axe in her abdomen. They split up to search through a millennia of trash and treasures from all corners of the Deep Roads. The mummified bodies and pieces of bodies scattered around the cave ensure that Marian is very careful where she searches, and what she touches. There's no food, worse luck, but Marian does find the Ortan family records. Shale wanders here and there, less interested than the rest, but it's the one who finds another cache which contains Branka's journal. The journal directs them further down and further in, south of something called the Dead Trenches, which Oghren tells her is where the darkspawn nest.

Of course it is. 

"South, then?" she says, checking with each of them for doubts; Shale doesn't care, and Oghren is raring to go, but Alistair grimaces at her. She knows what he's thinking. This is where Wardens go when it's their time. She doesn't want to go there either, not yet, and preferably not ever. And yet there is something of concern in his face, too, something just for her. She smiles at him, just a little turn of her mouth, but it seems to help.

They've gone beyond maps and Oghren's first- and second-hand knowledge; instead they're following marks in the dust and dirt and debris that litter the Deep Roads, hoping and praying that Branka's steady chip marks don't suddenly stop and leave them lost. 

This place is eerily abandoned; there aren't even any darkspawn here. It's hard not to imagine that these are some of the darkspawn who have dug their way out of the Deep Roads to plague the rest of Thedas. But on the fourth day, they stumble across a little room whose entrance has been cunningly hidden in the rock. There's food, thank the Maker, and a little clean water, but there are dwarven weapons, too, and spare camping gear and dried herbs, the elfroot wrapped up carefully like it's spun gold. 

"This must be a Legion outpost," Oghren says, surveying the room. "They're the only ones crazy enough to come down here."

They only take exactly what they need, but it's still more than Marian feels comfortable with; she leaves in its place some of her personal stock of elfroot and a few other herbs she keeps for emergencies, but it doesn't feel like enough. 

They've been walking for days and days, and it feels like they're getting nowhere. The Deep Roads never change, but for the parts where the roof has fallen down or the darkspawn have knocked the walls or floor in. Even those are too similar. Everything blends together after long, long hours walking the Deep Roads. She'd be lost in a heartbeat, down here by herself. 

She tries not to think about that.

Maker, it feels like years since she saw the sun. Or had a bath. Andraste's arsehole, she'd give anything for a bath. She _stinks_. She's almost gone nose-deaf, except that would be too much of a gift; instead she sometimes catches whiffs of herself when she's moving. The others aren't any better, of course, but at least Oghren came that way. And she's never worn her armor for so long in one go; it _itches_.

Knowing she's whining doesn't make her stop.

Several more days pass; she's long since stopped looking up or around, only checking every so often that they're still following Branka's trail. There haven't been any branches or crossroads, so they must still be on the right track. She's growing distracted and careless the longer they go without something happening or being attacked, and she knows that's not a good idea, but it's hard to bring herself to focus. 

So she doesn't really notice when the Road starts to gradually broaden, the wall to her right retreating until there's a great empty space. It's the beginning of a vast cavern, the biggest she's seen yet, whose far wall is hidden in the shadows. 

There's darkspawn there, somewhere. She can't see them, but she can feel them, pressing against her mind and sense of self, like they could eat her whole and leave her body a shell, waiting to be filled. 

There are a lot of them.

Their path leads them to the bridge over the crevasse, but as they move closer, the sense of the darkspawn grows stronger, more rapidly than she expects, given where she thinks they are. That doesn't make any sense to her.

That's when she hears them. There's no mistaking their voices, that hissing menace, for anything else, but there are so _many_ of them – 

Quickly Marian goes to the very edge, crawling the last foot on shaking hands and knees, and looks down. It's not lava down there. The light is coming from hundreds of thousands of torches, held by darkspawn of every type and description, jam-packed as tight as they can get at the bottom of the crevasse. The crevasse fades into darkness in both directions, but she can see tiny torches stretching into the distance. They go for miles. It's impossible to estimate numbers. Even if she knew how to estimate forces in that way, she can't conceive of those kinds of numbers. 

They've found the horde. She hadn't fully appreciated the meaning of the word _horde_ before. It's a literal sea of darkspawn. No longer does she secretly wonder if they could have held out at Ostagar. Even if it had only been a fragment of these numbers – no. She feels sick with more than nausea. She's so afraid, not just of dying but of failure, of being unequal to this monumental task that's fallen into their lap. She shares an apprehensive glance with Alistair. They're expected to fight _that_? Their little armies seem very small, all of a sudden. But then, even if they had every man and woman in Ferelden, still she doesn't know if they could do what must be done. 

Sometimes she catches herself tilting her head, trying to hear something that's just out of reach. She shakes her head, like she's trying to dislodge something, but it doesn't help. 

Suddenly there's activity below, the torches moving with new and terrible purpose, and Marian blanches. If they've been seen, they're dead. 

She throws herself backward when something leaps out of the crevasse on swift, silent wings; she crashes into Alistair and Cú, scrabbling away from the edge, because she feels it. She knows what this is.

The archdemon lands on the bridge and dwarfs it. It's huge, withered, pustulent black skin laid tight over malformed bones, but still, she knows it. It spoke to her at her Joining, it slithered its way into her dreams and it sings to her even now, calling the Blight in her blood to an all-encompassing, overwhelming _purpose_. 

It breathes purple fire over the assembled horde and watches as it staggers into motion, marching away, down the crevasse to Maker knows where. The archdemon roars again, fire and triumph and an ever-seeking rage, and then it crouches and launches itself into the air and wings away into the darkness.

Only now can Marian breathe again. She discovers that she has a body that is hers, and it's still lying on top of Alistair. He's breathing heavily. She wonders if he'd felt what she felt, and if they'll ever, ever talk about any of it out loud. She could curl into him, just like this, and bury her face in his chest and never ever come out – 

When Marian reaches her hand up, Shale picks Marian up so Alistair can get to his feet. "What was that bloody thing marching with them?" Oghren demands. For once, he looks almost young in his disbelief. 

"The archdemon." Marian brushes herself off with more care than is strictly necessary, avoiding their eyes. She doesn't know how she feels yet, but she knows that she wants to feel it without scrutiny.

Alistair's crept back to the edge to watch the horde. "They're going," he says after a moment. "I don't think they noticed us." 

"We must cross here, correct?" Shale asks. For once, it sounds unnerved. She's glad that it appreciates the seriousness of the situation, but right now she could use a joke. Or an unimpressed shrug. Or even something insane about pigeons. 

"We wait until they pass. We can't risk it." Her voice comes out colder than she'd meant, but she can't summon the energy to care. Something inside her is frozen, her essential sense of self subdued and grey. And yet she has the sense that this feeling is a fragile shell on something huge and twisted and violently seething, something she has no idea how to deal with. If it shatters...

Alistair takes her hand. He's not looking at her. She studies their joined hands in a detached sort of way; underneath his gauntlets lie the same gloves as hers. His vambraces are two pieces, joined with tiny hinges. There are even tiny plates laid on his fingers. She doesn't feel any of that, though, only the slight warmth of his palm where it touches hers through two layers of leather. 

They wait for what seems like hours; finally, finally, the last torches disappear into the distance, and they cross the bridge into the Dead Trenches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Andromeda is going to slow me down a bit, but I'm not done with this, not by a long shot.


End file.
